From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Supreme Court has struck out a suit by the 36 states’ governments and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) challenging the federal government’s application of recovered looted funds.
A seven-member panel of the court unanimously held that the suit was wrongly instituted before the apex court.
Justice Mohammed Idris who read the the lead judgment that was prepared by Justice Chidiebere Uwa, held that the plaintiffs wrongly invoked its jurisdiction.
The apex court specifically held that the subject matter of the suit, marked: SC/CV/395/2021, falls within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court.
In the said suit, the plaintiffs had claimed that “between 2015 and 2021 when the suit was filed, the FG has secured both international and municipal forfeiture, recovery and repatriation of “stolen assets” in the sum of NI,836,906,543,658.73, about 167 properties, 450 cars, 300 trucks and cargoes, and 20,000,000 barrels of crude oil worth over N450million,” which it allegedly failed to remit as required by the Constitution.
The plaintiffs equally alleged that instead of paying the cash into the Federation Account, the FG illegally diverted it into the Consolidated Revenue Accounts (CRA) and other accounts not recognised by the Nigerian Constitution.
The states argued that the CRA is the account into which FG’s share from the Federation Account, other federal earnings and funds belonging to specific state governments are paid.
They added that other federal earnings payable to the CRAs include receipts from federal government licenses and land revenue, administrative fees, earnings and sales, rent of government property, interests from federal government investments, repayments from state governments, Personal Income Tax of Armed Forces and others.
The plaintiffs stated that by establishing the Asset Recovery Account and Interim Forfeiture Recovery Account, into which revenue from recovered assets was to be paid, the Asset Recovery Regulation contradicts the provisions of the Constitution.