A Federal High Court, sitting in Abuja on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, dismissed the request by the Department of the State Services (DSS), to represent for admission, series of exhibits earlier rejected by the court in the trial of former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki over unlawful possession of firearms.
The court presided over by Justice Peter Lifu, held that admitting the exhibits through the back door as requested by the prosecution would amount to judicial rascality and pettiness which the court cannot afford to dabble into.
The court presided over by Justice Peter Lifu, while delivering ruling in an application made by the DSS lead lawyer, Oladipupo Okpeseyi, SAN, held that since the exhibits have been rejected and marked as such due to inappropriate foundation for their admission and lack of relevance to the charge, they stood and remained rejected.
Justice Lifu also held that toeing the path of the prosecution would put the court in a dangerous position of sitting as Court of Appeal over his own decision.
Justice Lifu said; “I recall that on July 10, 2025, I delivered a considered ruling, rejecting the same sets of exhibits due to improper foundation for their admission and lack of relevance to the charge.
“That ruling still subsist and I am bound by it. Any attempt to toe the paths of going against the same ruling will definitely amount to judicial rascality, pettiness. Common sense does not even support granting this kind of request. This court rejects the invitation and the request is hereby rejected,” the trial judge ruled.
Okpeseyi, SAN, had at the September 25 proceedings applied to the court to move its sitting to the DSS Headquarters in Abuja for the purpose of inspecting some vehicles said to have been recovered in Dasuki’s house during 2015 search warrant.
He said that the vehicles have been parked at the DSS headquarters in the past 10 years and should be inspected by the court for the purpose of admitting them as exhibits against Dasuki.
In what appeared as being taken aback based on the request, Justice Lifu requested to know the nature of the exhibits to be inspected at the DSS headquarters and in response, the DSS lawyer informed the court that they were those listed on the search warrant as items 18 to 28 and recovered from the Abuja house of the former NSA.
Reminded that the exhibits have been rejected and marked rejected by the court, OOkpeseyi said he has the right to represent them for the court to admit against the defendant.
While arguing the application for representation of the rejected exhibits, Okpeseyi cited several authorities, saying that the exhibits were marked rejected in the previous proceedings because the foundation for tendering them for admission at the time was not properly laid.
The DSS lawyer said he has now relaid the foundation, saying that the exhibits were rejected merely on improper foundation for admission and not on their irrelevance to the trial and therefore urged the court to grant his request.
But, counsel to Dasuki, Mr A. A. Usman, while objecting to the request, said the application by the counsel to the DSS was strange and unknown to law.
Usman argued that once an exhibit has been rejected and marked so by court, such an exhibit stands rejected and therefore submitted that since Justice Lifu had taken a decision on the exhibits, the court can no longer revisit the same exhibits or admit them through the back door.
Usman read out the earlier ruling of Justice Lifu that was delivered on July 10, in which it was clearly stated that the rejected exhibits have no relevance to the alleged unlawful possession of firearms and thus, failed the test of admissibility.
Usman further argued that the only option opened to the DSS was to go to the Court of Appeal to challenge the earlier rejection of the exhibits rather than inviting the same Judge to sit as an Appeal Court on the same matter.
The counsel to Dasuki therefore pleaded with Justice Lifu to throw away the application as baseless, ill conceived, misplaced, unwarranted and a ploy to draw the hand of clock backward.
