Court freezes 32 bank accounts linked to #EndBadGovernance protests
A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered that the bank accounts of 32 individuals and organisations linked to the #EndBadGovernance protests which took place across Nigeria earlier this be frozen.
The court’s ruling, delivered by Justice Emeka Nwite, was in response to an ex-parte motion filed by the Inspector-General of Police’s counsel, Ibrahim Mohammed.
The order also mandates banks to arrest and detain account holders or anyone found transacting business on the affected accounts, pending further investigation and prosecution.
In his ruling, Justice Nwite directed banks to issue details of the account packages and place a Post-No-Debit (PND) order on the accounts.
The court also instructed the banks to disable ATM access while allowing inflows into the said accounts from the date of the order. Banks were further directed to notify the Nigeria Police Force through specified telephone numbers as soon as any arrest was made.
The accounts affected by the court’s order include those at Fidelity Bank (4010073491, 5630208636), Access Bank (1255130019, 0040580047), Abbey Mortgage Multipurpose Bank Plc (0006084167), FCMB (0821931299, 1012007655), A AG Mortgage Bank Plc (0000575573), UBA (1007871587, 2037117333, 1022899050, 2088228208), ECOBANK (5421031104), Union Bank (0024541201), Branch International Services Ltd (8755008491, 8755008499, 6112464260, 6112464267), Zenith Bank (2115678044), First Bank (3041823452, 3024402748), New Edge Finance (1011828445), GTBank (0161502459), Wema Bank (0250291788), Sparkle Microfinance Bank Ltd (1000774097), Fairmoney Microfinance Bank (4936992542, 3434649965), KUDA Microfinance Bank (2013556714), Polaris Bank (3104962864), OPAY (8137051249), and PALMPAY (8137051249).
The Inspector-General of Police, in the application marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1219/2024, listed PA.LIN.HO Global Service Ltd, Innocent Angel Lovet Chinyere Nkiru, Obidient Movement Multipurpose Cooperative Society, Innocent Angel Lovet, and Great Communicators Champion Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd as the 1st to 5th respondents, respectively.
Other respondents include Great Communicators Champion Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd, Opaluwa Eleojo Bob-Simon, NUEE State Chapter, Adeyemi Abiodun Abayomi, Adaramoye Michael Tobiloba, and Popoola Festus, among others.
In his four-ground argument, the Inspector-General of Police’s counsel alleged that the frozen accounts were being used to facilitate illicit activities, including criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felonies, cyberbullying, and cyberstalking.
He claimed that unlawful funds were transferred into these accounts, which are now linked to individuals currently at large, who are accused of undermining the sovereignty of the Nigerian state by hosting another country’s flag.
Supporting the motion, Gregory Woji, a detective attached to the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), stated in his affidavit that preliminary investigations revealed that some suspects were recruited by financiers to cause mayhem and destroy life and property during the protests.
Woji further claimed that these financiers were sending money to recruit indigent and vulnerable individuals to carry banners and attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government.
According to Woji, the investigation uncovered the involvement of certain foreign nationals in the treasonable felony and terrorism financing activities in Nigeria. He emphasized that the actions of the accused are tantamount to criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, cyberstalking, and cyberbullying, all of which are punishable offences.
Woji also stressed the urgency of freezing these accounts to prevent the suspects from transferring or withdrawing funds that could compromise the ongoing investigation. He argued that it would be in the interest of justice to grant the request by freezing the accounts and ordering the immediate arrest of the suspects upon sighting them, pending the outcome of the investigation and possible prosecution.
The ruling, though made on Thursday, was only sighted on Sunday in Abuja, as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
