The Federal Government continues to bear the burden of continual disobedience to court orders, investigations by the PUNCH reports. One of such orders being disobeyed by the Federal Government is the one made by the Federal High Court in Abuja directing the police to unseal the headquarters of a non-governmental organisation, Peace Corps of Nigeria. Justice Gabriel Kolawole (recently elevated to the Court of Appeal), in a judgment he delivered on November 9, 2017, awarded the sum of N12.5m as damages in favour of Peace Corps, its National Commandant, Dickson Akor, and its 48 other members over the unlawful invasion of their headquarters in Abuja on February 28, 2017. In the judgment delivered in the fundamental human rights enforcement suit filed by the 50 plaintiffs, Justice Kolawole also ordered the police to immediately unseal the group’s headquarters at 57, Iya Abubakar Crescent, Off Alex Ekwueme Way, Opposite Jabi Lake, Jabi, Abuja. However, a check by our correspondent on Friday showed that about eight months after the judgment was delivered, the police have yet to comply. Also, President Muhammadu Buhari, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, may have ignored a court judgment directing them to set the overall limits for the “amounts of consolidated debts” of the nation’s federal, state and local governments. SUNDAY PUNCH obtained certified true copy of the judgment which was delivered by Justice Kolawole of the Federal High Court in Abuja on February 20, 2018. Justice Kolawole ruled in the judgment that it was mandatory for the government to set the debt limits as provided by section 42(1) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007. He specifically ordered Buhari, Adeosun, and Malami to set the debt limits and be approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives within 90 days. By calculation, the 90 days ultimatum ordered by the court lapsed on May 22. The government also seems to have failed to take advantage of the window given by the judge to approach the court for an extension of the 90 days period. The plaintiff, Centre for Social Justice, which instituted the suit leading to the judgment, also said government had yet to appeal against the court’s verdict. Buhari, the Senate, the House of Representatives, Adeosun and Malami were the 1st to the 5th defendants to the suit. Concerned by the fast-growing local and foreign debt profiles of the federal and state governments, the group had instituted the suit on May 8, 2013 during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. The judge ruled that by virtue of section 5(1)(a) and (b) of the 1999 Constitution, Buhari and the AGF were duty-bound to execute all the Acts duly passed by the National Assembly. Also, until May 2018, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, also known as Shi’ites, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeinab, when they were charged with murder before the High Court of Kaduna State, the couple had been held in the custody of the Department of State Services since December 2015 without charge. Incidentally, Justice Kolawole, then of the Federal High Court in Abuja, on December 2, 2016, delivered a judgment directing the DSS to release the couple. The order has yet to be obeyed while the couple’s bail application remained pending before the court where they were recently charged. The culture of disobedience to court order by the Federal Government also manifests in the case of the immediate-past National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.). DSS operatives on December 29, 2015, re-arrested and took Dasuki into custody shortly after he was released from Kuje Prison in Abuja on meeting the bail conditions imposed on him by the courts where he is being currently prosecuted on various charges of criminal diversion, money laundering and illegal possession of firearms. He was earlier granted bail by both the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Maitama, Abuja, where he is facing two separate sets of charges of diversion of funds earmarked for the purchase of arms to fight insurgency in the North-East, and the Federal High Court in Abuja where he is being prosecuted on charges of illegal possession of firearms and money laundering. Dissatisfied with his continued detention despite being granted bail by the courts and the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States’ judgment, Dasuki, through his counsel, Mr. Joseph Daudu (SAN) and Mr. Ahmed Raji (SAN), filed a fresh suit before the Federal High Court, on March 15, this year. Delivering judgment in the suit on July 2, 2018, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu, granted bail to Dasuki in the sum of N200m with two sureties in like sum. Also yet to be obeyed by the Federal Government is a court judgment delivered by Justice Ibrahim Idris of the Federal High Court in Lagos (now a Justice of the Court of Appeal), ordering it to release the details of the receipt and spending of all the recovered stolen funds since the return of democracy in 1999. The judgment delivered on March 24, 2016 was obtained by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project. But when contacted on Saturday, the spokesperson for the Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Salihu Isah, without giving details or any timeline, said all judgments against the Federal Government, would be obeyed. “The process of obeying all the judgments is on. We are only taking out time to study them,” Isah said.]]>
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