The Federal High Court, Abuja Division, on Wednesday, rejected two documents tendered by Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, in his trial over alleged defamatory remarks against President Bola Tinubu.

Justice Mohammed Umar, in a ruling, declined an oral application by Mr Sowore’s lawyer, Marshall Abubakar, seeking an order admitting a set of documents, comprising print-outs of publications in evidence.

Mr Sowore is being prosecuted by the State Security Service for making false claims about Mr Tinubu, referring to him as “a criminal” in posts on his X and Facebook accounts.

The publications include media reports about SSS’ dismissal of 115 officials for misconduct; the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission charging five ex-governors with corruption; the EFCC sacking 27 of its officials over fraud and misconduct; and the EFCC’s arrest of some ex-staff of the NNPC over N7.2 billion fraud.

In the ruling, the judge agreed with SSS lawyer, Akinlolu Kehinde, that the best opportunity for the defendant to tender the documents is during the conduct of his defence.

The judge held that, since the first prosecution witness (PW-1), cross-examined by Abubakar, said he knew nothing about the publications contained in the documents, those documents could not be tendered through the witness.

“You cannot tender a document through a witness who said he did not know anything about it. The document is hereby marked as rejected,” Justice Umar said.

In the second ruling, the judge rejected another set of documents, comprising printouts of publications, which Mr Abubakar claimed showed that Mr Tinubu allegedly called former President Goodluck Jonathan “a drunkard and sinking fisherman,” and that he also called former President Olusegun Obasanjo “an expired meat”.

The judge marked the documents as rejected for the same reason he had given for rejecting the first set.

Mr Umar, however, frowned at the report by the prosecuting lawyer that a member of the defence team had live-streamed previous proceedings in the case and urged the court to order an investigation to identify the person behind it.

Although Mr Abubakar denied that any member of the defence team was involved and claimed it could have been carried out by the DSS or by people in the presidency, the judge said such conduct amounted to contempt of court.

Mr Abubakar urged the court to caution only against a repeat of such an incident, rather than to grant the prosecuting lawyer’s request for an investigation.

The judge said it was easy to identify the person responsible for the incident and that he could direct security agencies to investigate the matter, as it was a serious matter.

Although the judge promised to address the issue at the end of the day’s proceedings, he remained silent on it when adjourning the case.

(NAN)