Former Church Keyboard Player At The Mercy Of Rev. Chris Okotie And Corrupt Lagos Magistrate Judge

Posted: July 17, 2013 

Rev. Chris Okotie

By SaharaReporters, New York

The matter of alleged assault between the Pastor of Household of God Church, Rev. Chris Okotie and his former church pianist, Oklotor Daphiaghor, has just taken an increasingly curious, complicated turn. As things play out, presiding Lagos magistrate, Mrs. Abimbola Oshodi Makanjuola has blatantly taken it upon herself to convict the defendant by collaborating with Okotie’s lawyer, Mr. Kola Dopamu.
After Magistrate, Makanjuola shot down a May 10, 2013 request from the defendant’s lawyer asking the court to order Rev. Okotie to produce purported video evidence of the claimed rough-handling, suspicion began to emerge that she was indeed extra-judicially lending a hand of legal support to Rev. Okotie for his intended mischief against his former keyboardist.
 Pastor Okotie’s case is based on his allegation that on July 15th, 2012, Daphiaghor had attempted to bar him from entering the church, an attempt, he claimed included assault.
 The former pianist denies the allegations, claiming that he had simply gone to the church to ask for the back pay owed him for thirteen years. The money, Daphiaghor maintains, was owed to him not only from his employment as a pianist during church services, but also from various record deals undertaken on behalf of the flamboyant pastor.
 In a strange twist, on May 30th, 2013, Magistrate Makanjuola announced her sudden withdrawal from the case and but then transfers the case to another magistrate shortly after the case was called. She instantly ordered policemen at the court premises to arrest Mr. Daphiaghor for a ‘summary trial’ before another magistrate over what she termed " contempt of court ."  She further accused the defendant of causing proceedings to be published on SaharaReporters.com and as well sharing details of court proceedings on his Facebook page.
At the summary trial before the new Magistrate, Mr. Akinde, Magistrate Makanjuola played all roles, including that of prosecutor, witness and legal instructor to Akinde by alternating position at intervals. She dictated as Magistrate Akinde followed.
 The contempt trial saw Mrs. Makanjuola swiftly presenting the charge for contempt before Magistrate Akinde and directing the Magistrate to ensure a conviction of Mr. Daphiaghor, which included a maximum sentence of six months in prison for contempt of court.
 Mrs. Makanjuola then admitted that she would have convicted the defendant by herself, but she preferred it to be in another court as she had recused herself from the main matter involving Okotie and transferred same to another magistrate.
 The charge was then read to the defendant, who pleaded ‘not guilty’. Application for bail by the defendant’s lawyer was moved, but instead of ruling on it, Magistrate Akinde aligned with the suggestion of Mrs. Makanjuola that it was not necessary to apply for bail as the judgment was about to be delivered almost instantly.
 The defendant’s lawyer also requested the opportunity to cross-examine the ‘witness’, but Mrs. Makanjuola stormed out of the witness box and warned that she could not be cross-examined by the defense lawyer. She resisted all attempts at bail, insisting the defendant must be convicted on the spot.
 Sensing what Mrs. Makanjuola and the new magistrate were up to, the defense requested time to study the charge, and was quite graciously granted thirty minutes of the court’s time.
However, curiously, the defense raised the observation as the trial resumed that the SaharaReporters publication which was being used as evidence by Mrs. Makanjuola to prove her case on the ‘contempt’ charge was actually a printout from the email box of Rev. Okotie’s lawyer, Kola Dopamu. The printout was an emailed copy of the publication from SaharaReporters website to a third party, and later forwarded to Rev. Okotie’s lawyer and printed out for Mrs. Makanjuola to use in her initiated ‘contempt’ case.
 A source familiar with the proceeding observed Dopamu rejoicing over the team’s successful utilization of Mr. Okotie's judicial clout in ensuring a swift verdict against his former pianist.
In a haste to convict, all grounds of objection against admissibility of the printout were speedily overruled. How Mrs. Makanjuola who initially would not admit computer-generated evidence without a certificate of proof, now permitted a printout of electronic correspondence to be admitted in evidence in her case before another Magistrate baffled lawyers.
 Overseen by Makanjuola, however, Akinde claimed that ‘only relevancy of the document’ mattered in that case, not so much a certificate proving its origin, despite the document’s origin being Dopamu’s email inbox and the blatant conniving efforts of himself and the Magistrate to deny justice to Daphiaghor.
 The Magistrate then adjourned, set a date of July 3rd, 2013, for judgment, and ordered that defendant be remanded at the Kirikiri maximum prison.
 Before this date, however, the defendant’s lawyer wrote a petition, detailing the process to Lagos State Chief Judge, Mrs. Ayo Philip, who ordered investigation into the case.
 Upon this notice, the prodded Magistrate Akinde (who did not as much record anything from the defense) appeared to have quickly made-up a court record of the case to cover his tracks in the hastily-executed proceedings.
The loosely and quickly packaged Certified True Copy (CTC) produced by Magistrate Akinde was filled with many errors that make a mockery of Court’s CTC essence. A copy of the document obtained by SaharaReporters had also included proceedings that did not happen at the summary trial. For instance, it indicated that the magistrate adjourned to rule on bail and cross-examination, whereas the actual adjournment was for the judgment to convict as it was pronounced that bail was not necessary, because the judgment would be snappy.
Another gapping error in the fake CTC was that it did not contain records of the judge ordering the defendant to be remanded at Kirikiri maximum prison pending ‘judgement’. In actuality, Daphiaghor remained in Kirikiri maximum prison from the 30th of May, 2013, to July 3rd, 2013, when his bail was secured before a Lagos State High Court judge, Adeniyi Onigbanjo.
 Mrs. Makanjuola, in her desperation to convict Mr. Okiotor on behalf Rev. Okotie recovered  a printout of SaharaReporters publication with supposed leaked information at the hearing. Although Mrs. Makanjuola claimed she got the printout from a relative who resides abroad, the address on the email showed that it was from the email box of Rev. Okotie’s lawyer, Mr. Kola Dopamu with the email address.
 From the outset, Mrs. Makanjuola hated media presence at the court during proceedings. At the commencement of the trial, she ordered journalists to leave her court, despite objections from the defense lawyer who cited provisions of the constitution which gave journalists the right freely cover events of public interest.
A source that is familiar with Mrs. Makanjuola alleged that the reason for her abhorrence of the press is her corrupt lifestyle. The source hinted that a lot of awaiting trial inmates within the Kirikiri prison are remanded solely by Mrs. Makanjuola. She allegedly then requests for two sureties during bail application by most defendants—one she accepts, and the other she refuses until she is ‘settled’, something she certainly doesn’t want journalists to find out.