Kogi Government Sues EFCC, Demands N35 Billion In Damages

 

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has been sued by the Kogi State Government.

 

The Yahaya Bello-led government sued EFCC over allegations that it fixed N19.3 billion bail-out funds received from the Federal Government, according to Vanguard.

 

This came as Justice J. Majebi of a Kogi State High Court also granted an interim injunction restraining the EFCC from issuing further official or unofficial publications over the issue involving a new generation bank (namewithheld) with Account No. 0073572696 or any other account purportedly belonging to Kogi State Government.

 

The Kogi State Government, Accountant-General of the State, Momoh Jibrin; and Commissioner for Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Asiwaju Mukadam Asiru, were claimants in the suit, while the EFCC, a new generation bank and Central Bank of Nigeria were listed as defendants.

 

The state government is demanding:

 

 

The High Court granted the following:

 

 

The Motion on Notice shall be heard on December 17, 2021, according to the Court.

 

The plaintiff asked the Court to declare that the publication by the EFCC containing, amongst others, false and unfounded allegations of N19.3 billion being returned was defamatory of the character of the Kogi State government.

 

The Kogi government asked for “an order of this Court compelling the 1st Defendant to, within 48 hours of the order of this Court, publish in three national dailies, a retraction of her frivolous allegations and also tender unreserved apology to the Claimant for the defamatory publication written against the Claimant.”

 

While asking the Court to declare the publication as “misconceived, wrongful, illegal, null and void”, the plaintiff also asked the Court to declare that the conduct of the 2nd defendant (a new generation bank) was wrong, illegal, null and void in opening a fixed deposit account number 0073572696 and naming it Kogi bailout account without an application, request, authority or consent of the government.

 

The Kogi State government had earlier threatened to take the EFCC to Court if the commission failed to retract and apologise over statements it continually made in the media with the aim of disparaging the state.

 

Particularly, the government said it could not understand how the EFCC kept attributing an account number to the state even after Sterling Bank had written to explain that there was never a time it gave the bank the mandate to open the said account.

 

It said it was also alarmed by what it described as “the falsehood in the activities of the EFCC claiming that N20 billion bailout funds, belonging to Kogi State, was hidden in a fixed deposit account with the said bank, which surprisingly now has a balance of less than the fixed N20 billion even after allegedly being kept for some years.”