NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 6 — The High Court has declined a bid by The Director of Public Prosecution to set aside a November 2, 2023, ruling which ordered the closure of a Sh357 million graft case against Former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko.
Justice Nixon Sifuna instead referred the DPP to the trial magistrate court where he said the matter will proceed as directed.
“As I have always stated, the court is a master of its proceedings and only it has the task of controlling and managing its proceedings,” Justice Sifuna ruled.
“The task of the litigants is to present their case and not to control and manage the court or the judicial officer presiding over their case.”
In its decision in November 2023, the Magistrate Court told off the Public Prosecutor for plunging the Anti-Corruption Court into unending adjournments in a graft case against former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko.
Magistrate Eunice Nyuttu expressed her frustrations over an emerging pattern by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Renson Ingonga to incessantly ask for adjournments via text messages and emails to court, dragging the Sh357 million case.
She noted the case against Sonko and sixteen others had stalled for four years, giving Ingonga’s office the last chance to produce witnesses against the accused.
Nyuttu singled out two prosecutors assigned the case even as she accused the DPP’s office of “tactifully absconding the case and employing a certain pattern of adjourning the case through text messages and sending emails to the court and the EACC lawyer”.
She noted that the unacceptable trend was stonewalling justice with accused persons “returning home without having justice being done.”
