THE MAMBILLA TRIAL: EFCC winds up on star-witness
The court session for Monday, 30 March 2026 was indeed business like and it marked the end of the appearances of the famous PW3, the Assistant Commissioner of Police who became the Chief Investigator at the EFCC, Mr Umar Babangida. The court was fixed for 12 Noon and it sat promptly. The Mambilla case was called at 12.42 pm and was adjourned after about two hours.
It was the first day of Mr Babangida’s re-examination by his lawyer after a meticulous cross-examination by the Defence lawyers which lasted over 6 months.
The prosecution laid out only three questions aimed at throwing more light over areas which the Prosecution believed suffered damages of the cross-examination. However, the defence repeatedly told the judge that the questions being asked were “incompetent questions” and the Defence further argued that if the court allowed the prosecution to bring in new issues that were not initially presented hy the prosecution,
the Defence too would request for specific cross-examination.
The judge listened to both sides and ruled to allow PW3 to respond to the three questions of his lawyer.
The prosecution told the court that on 17 February 2026, Witness Babangida admitted that he reported the legal opinions of three past Attorneys General of the Federation. The Winess said, Mr Kanu Agabi (under President Obasanjo) said he could not longer remember what happened in 2003; he also said Mr. Michael Aondoaka (under President Umaru Yar’Adua) said that his legal opinion written to the president in 2008 was not influenced by the Extracts of FEC Minutes produced by EFCC and that Alhaji Abubakar Malami (under President Buhari) said that he wrote his legal opinions of May 2016 to the president without seeing any of the two versions of Extracts of the Minutes of FEC Meeting of 2003 produced by the EFCC.
Secondly, PW3 was led to say that a major difference between the two versions of the “Minutes of the FEC Meeting of 2003” submitted by EFCC was that one had only details of the Ministry of Power, the Mambilla Contract while the other version has other details from other ministries.
Thirdly, the prosecution said this question was in direct reference to the cross-examination of 9 October 2025 during which PW3 was unable to show the court where it was written in the Minutes of the FEC Meeting of 2003 that the President gave directives to the defendant. The prosecution, therefore, asked the winess again to show if any other directive was in the FEC miniutes, to which he said: “Yes. On page 6, Paragraph 4 (i)”, in reference to another directive, not by the President of the Federal Republic.
At this stage, the prosecution closed his case and announced that he was done with PW3. He will bring PW4 to court next time.
The judge adjourned till Monday, 20 April 2026.
#NewsMan
