Bauchi convicts 20, tries 2,500 in five years

The Bauchi State Government has said that it tried 2,500 cases in five years and secured the conviction in 20 criminal cases.

The Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General, Hassan El-Yakub (SAN) while speaking at the State Ministerial briefing on Friday, said that 557 cases comprising of armed robbery, culpable homicide, rape, kidnapping and other minor offences were recorded between January 2023 and June 2024.

Speaking on the cost implication of the prosections, El-Yakub said that before his assumption of office “all high-profile cases were given out to external solicitors, mostly Senior Advocates (SANs) and an average fee of N500million was spent yearly in settling their fees. This trend has now been reversed. We now handle all such cases in-house and thereby saving the state this huge amount.

“We have also successfully defended most of the garnishee proceedings/cases which have hitherto held the state to ransom and we have made it a policy in the Ministry not to allow under any circumstance such cases to reoccur in the future.

“We have from just three cases, between 2023 to date saved the state the sum of N1,858,412,289.”

According to him, the Ministry being a service rendering Ministry, was able to generate the sum of N236,618,298 from drafting of agreements and other legal instruments from 2023 to date.

“Upon assumption of duty, I identified some of the challenges bedevilling the Ministry and which are responsible for the low rate of productivity and the negative perception of the Ministry which mainly include the following: Lack of sufficient manpower, and Lack of basic working materials.”

It would be recalled that a graduate of Microbiology from the University of Jos and resident of Bauchi, Daniel Isaac, has spent one month at the Bauchi State Correctional Facility after bagging a one-year jail term in February.

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