Chief Executive Officer of First Nation Airways Limited, Kayode Odukoya, has berated the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for failing to update its official website to reflect his acquittal, nine months after a Lagos State Special Offences High Court cleared him of a fraud charge.

He said the omission has prolonged the reputational damage caused by the case and fuelled continued public misconceptions about his integrity. Odukoya, who was arraigned alongside the airline in 2018, had faced allegations of fraud, forgery, and stealing over credit facilities obtained from Polaris Bank.

But in a landmark judgement delivered in December 2023, Justice Mojisola Dada dismissed all counts, declaring that the EFCC’s case “collapsed like a pack of cards” due to unreliable and inadmissible evidence. Despite the acquittal, the anti-graft agency’s online case-tracking portal still classified the matter as being pending.

First Nation Airways described this as an “unjust extension of media trial” that undermines the principle of presumption of innocence. In her judgement, Justice Dada held that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, faulting the EFCC’s reliance on a disputed “Memorandum of Loss of Certificate of Occupancy”.

The judge said the document was a mere photocopy without authentication, lacking any proof it was received or acted upon by the bank. “The totality of the prosecution’s case rests on quicksand, collapsing like a pack of cards,” she held, acquitting Odukoya and the company on all counts”. Odukoya lamented that even though the court had vindicated him, the EFCC’s silence online meant the public still perceived him through the lens of the original charge.