By Gilbert Alasa.
The travails of popular Nigerian lawyer Mr. Rickey Tarfa may be far from over as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Monday accused him of falsifying his age, urging Justice Mohammed Idris of a Federal High Court in Lagos not to allow a further and better affidavit filed by the Senior Advocate of Nigeria in support of his N2.5bn suit against the EFCC.
EFCC’s lawyer, Mr. Wahab Shittu, on Monday moved a counter-affidavit to Tarfa’s application seeking to tender a better and further affidavit to support his case, telling the court that: “He who comes to equity must come with clean hands.”
Official of the commission, Moses Awolusi, claimed in a counter-affidavit, that though Tarfa gave his age as 43 in the statement he made to the EFCC on the day of his arrest, investigations revealed that Tarfa’s real age is 54, not 43 as he claimed.
He said: “I know as a fact that the applicant, in his extrajudicial statement to the 1st respondent upon his arrest, falsely stated that his age was 43 years in the document marked Exhibit 1 to the counter-affidavit of the 1st respondent dated 18th February, 2016, whereas the true age of the applicant, as stated in the compendium published for all Senior Advocates of Nigeria referred to, is 54 years old.”
However, Tarfa’s lawyer, Chief Bolaji Ayorinde (SAN), prayed Justice Idris to disregard the claims by the commission, adding that anyone could misrepresent his age under the kind of treatment that the EFCC subjected Tarfa to on February 5.
He argued that the commission should focus on how it would debunk Tarfa’s claim that an Access Bank account into which his law firm paid N225,000 into on January 7, 2014 belonged to one Mohammed Awal Yunusa and not Justice Mohammed Nasir Yunusa as the EFCC had claimed.
Earlier, the anti-corruption agency had claimed that Mr. Rickey Tarfa made a payment of N225,000 bribe into Justice Yunusa’s Access Bank account.
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