Nigeria's Supreme Court has set Friday for judgment on the appeal filed by Aminu Sule Lamido, son of former Jigawa State governor Sule Lamido, after he pleaded guilty to failing to properly declare $40,000 at an international airport.
Aminu is asking the top court to overturn earlier rulings of both the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal, which found him guilty of falsely declaring foreign currency and ordered that a part of the undeclared funds be confiscated.
The case relates to his arrest by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport on December 11, 2012, when he was about to board a flight to Cairo, Egypt.
According to the prosecution, Aminu informed Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) officers that he had $10,000, but later investigation revealed that an additional $40,000 was not included in the currency declaration form.
He was later convicted before the Federal High Court in Kano of one count of false declaration of foreign currency, an offense under the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act.
In a judgment delivered on July 12, 2015, the trial court found Aminu guilty and ordered him to hand over 25 percent of the undisclosed amount to the federal government.
Unhappy with that outcome, Aminu took the case to the Court of Appeal in Kaduna, seeking to overturn both the conviction and the confiscation order.
However, the appellate court rejected his arguments in its judgment dated December 7, 2015, affirming the trial court's decision and resolving all issues against him.
Saying justice was denied, Aminu then approached the Supreme Court, seeking to quash the judgments of the two lower courts and set aside his conviction.
The EFCC has prosecuted the case from the trial stage through the appellate process, while Aminu is represented by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
In the recent hearing before the Supreme Court, lawyers from both sides accepted their written arguments, after which the court reserved the verdict and fixed Friday, January 16, 2026, for its final decision.
