Theophillus Onuoha V. The State (1988)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report

B. CRAIG, J.S.C. 

This case originated in the High Court of Justice,Ilorin Kwara State. In that court, the Appellant was charged before Gbadeyan, J. for criminal breach of trust contrary to section 315 of the Penal Code and after due trial in which 17 witnesses testified for the prosecution and 3 for the defence the appellant was found guilty and was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment; he was also ordered to forfeit to the Federal Government the sum of N68,959.50 which he had misappropriated.

The Appellant was dissatisfied with that judgment and he appealed to the Court of Appeal Kaduna Division on several grounds of appeal most of them involving facts or mixed law and facts. The Appellant also appealed against the sentence passed on him particularly that of forfeiture.

That appeal was argued at length and in a well considered judgment by Maidama J.C.A. (Akpata and Ogundere JJ.C.A. concurring). The lower Court allowed the appeal in respect of the order of forfeiture and dismissed his appeal on all the other grounds. The appellant has appealed further to this Court on seven grounds of appeal and I should like to observe that these grounds of appeal are substantially the same as were canvassed in the Court below. The grounds of appeal before this court without the particulars are as follows:-

I have chosen to omit the particulars because I find them extremely wordy and argumentative.

“GROUND 1 – ERROR IN LAW:

The Learned Justice of the Court of Appeal holden at Kaduna erred in law in affirming the conviction of the appellant and failed to hold that the “Judgment” delivered by the learned trial Judge in the court below did not accord with the intendment of S. 269 of the Criminal Procedure Code and is thus not valid in law.

GROUND 2:

The Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal erred in law when they failed to hold that the decision of the trial Court is unreasonable, unwarranted and cannot he supported having regard to the evidence at the trial.

GROUND 3 – ERROR IN LAW:

The Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal erred in law when they failed to hold that by believing and accepting the case of the prosecution during his review of the prosecution’s case the Learned trial Judge occasioned a miscarriage of Justice.

GROUND 4 – ERROR IN LAW:

The learned Justices of the Court of Appeal erred in law when they held that Samuel Aina (P.W.10) and Osude Habu (PW.11) at the trial were not accomplices or witnesses who had some personal interest to protect and whose evidence ought to have been rejected at the trial or at best treated with utmost caution…”

GROUND 5 – ERROR IN LAW: