The Accra High Court has dismissed a motion seeking to strike out 16 counts of offences against former National Food and Buffer Stock Company (NAFCO) Chief Executive Officer, Hanan Abdul-Wahab Aludiba, who is standing trial with his wife, Faiza Seidu Wuni.
The court has, however, ordered the prosecution to amend two of the counts for lacking essential particulars.
Delivering a bench ruling on Thursday, July 23, 2026, Justice Francis Apangabuno Achibonga held that the charge sheet, taken together with the accompanying affidavit, gave Aludiba reasonable information about the nature of the allegations against him and was sufficient to enable him to mount a defence.
Grounds
On the first ground, which the applicant’s lawyer, Godfred Yeboah Dame, argued that the charges lacked the specific details needed for Aludiba to understand and defend himself, the court found that the prosecution was only required to provide particulars giving reasonable information as to the nature of the charge. The court held that Aludiba had been given sufficient information to know the kind of allegation preferred against him and dismissed this ground.
On the argument that the prosecution had improperly combined distinct offences into single counts, the court held that no charge combined a series of separate offences into one count. It held that where a charge relates to a series of offences arising from the same conduct, there was nothing improper about framing it as a single count, and dismissed this ground as well.
On the argument that stealing and false pretences had been improperly charged together over the same facts, the court acknowledged it would appear contradictory to allege that property was obtained both without consent and with consent induced by deception at the same time. However, the court was of the view that the constitutional principle and the position in the country’s criminal jurisprudence was that a person shall not be punished twice for the same offence, not that a person cannot be charged twice over the same act.
Relying on Section 157 of Act 30, the court ruled there was nothing wrong with prosecutors mounting both charges on separate counts, provided a conviction was not entered on both.
Despite dismissing this ground in principle, the court found that Count 14, the count on defrauding by false pretence against Aludiba, did not give reasonable information, as it failed to state that he had made a representation he knew to be false or did not know to be true. The court found the same defect in Count 9, also on defrauding by false pretence against the second accused, Faiza Seidu Wuni.
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