Recovered loot: Supreme Court strikes 36 states’ suit against FG

Supreme Court

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.

In a judgment on Friday, a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court was unanimous in holding that the suit was wrongly instituted before the apex court.

In the lead judgment, prepared by Justice Chidiebere Uwa, but read by Justice Mohammed Idris, the apex court held that the plaintiffs wrongly invoked its jurisdiction.

It held that the subject matter of the suit, marked: SC/CV/395/2021, was within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court.

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.

They 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. Nation