A federal high court sitting in Abuja, on Thursday dismissed the
suit instituted by the Registered
Trustees of Socio – Economic and Accountability Project, SERAP, and two other
rights and development based NGOs against the federal government, to probe the
$12.4 billion gulf oil windfall in 1991 during the Ibrahim Babangida military
regime.
Justice Gabriel Kolawale in the judgment which lasted for
Two and half hours, held that the application seeking to compel the federal
government to probe the IBB regime on the $12.4 billion, failed because of the
plaintiff's inability to proof by way of admissible evidence, the existence of
the alleged Dedicated and Special Account, operated by the Central Bank of
Nigeria.
On the admissibility of exhibit A, the purported copy of
the 1994 Pius Okigbo report, allegedly indicting General Babangida, Justice
Kolawale said the report is neither a certified true copy nor a gazetted copy
by the federal government to be relied upon , thereby questioning the veracity
of its content.
Justice Kolawale while dismissing the suit also held that
the plaintiff lacks jurisdiction to the fundamental right of enforcement rules
which allows for a Twelve months window period for such application to be
brought before the court, in a matter that was filed in April 2010 as against
2005 when the course of action actually took place.
t would be recalled that the Federal Government in 1994
after the exit of Babangida, commissioned the panel to investigate the
activities of the Central Bank of Nigeria and recommend measures for the re
-organisation of the apex bank.
In the course of its assignment, the panel discovered
that the 12.5 billion US Dollars in the Dedicated and Special Accounts had been
depleted to a mere 200 million US Dollars by June of 1994.
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