A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered the freezing of bank accounts belonging to 32 individuals and companies connected to the recent 10-day #EndBadGovernance protest held across the country.
The decision was made as part of an ongoing investigation and potential prosecution related to the protest, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.
Justice Emeka Nwite issued the ruling on an ex-parte motion filed by the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Mohammed. The judge also instructed the banks to apprehend the account holders or anyone conducting business on these accounts.
In his ruling, Justice Nwite stated, “The banks are hereby directed by this honourable court to issue details of the account package(s) and to place a Post-No-Debit (PND) on the accounts, disable the ATM while allowing inflow into the said accounts as from the date of this court order.”
The motion, dated and filed on August 20, led to the freezing of accounts across various banks, including Fidelity Bank, Access Bank, FCMB, UBA, ECOBANK, Union Bank, and others. Some of the account numbers affected are 4010073491 (Fidelity Bank), 1255130019 (Access Bank), 0006084167 (Abbey Mortgage Multipurpose Bank Plc), 0821931299 (FCMB), and 1007871587 (UBA).
The IGP’s application, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1219/2024, listed several respondents, including PA.LIN.HO Global Service Ltd, Innocent Angel Lovet Chinyere Nkiru, Obidient Movement Multipurpose Cooperative Society, and others.
The counsel for the IGP, Mohammed, argued that the accounts are under investigation and are suspected of holding proceeds from unlawful activities or fraud. He said, “If there is any dealing with the account by way of withdrawal or transfer to another account by the persons under investigation/investigator and the persons that have absolute power to deal with the account will render nugatory any consequential order(s) which the court may make at the conclusion of this application.”
He further alleged that the accounts were being used to promote criminal activities such as conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, cyberbullying, and cyberstalking. According to him, “The accused persons were involved in hosting another country’s flag in order to undermine the sovereignty of the Nigerian state.”
In support of the motion, Detective Gregory Woji from the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) stated that preliminary investigations revealed that some suspects arrested were being financed to cause mayhem and destroy life and property. He added, “Preliminary investigation further reveals that some foreign nationals were the harrow head in the unscrupulous act of treasonable felony and promoting terrorism financing in Nigeria.”
Woji emphasized the need for the court to grant the order to freeze the accounts and arrest the suspects, arguing that it is in the interest of justice to prevent any actions that could jeopardize the investigation.
“It will be in the interest of justice to grant this request by freezing the account of the said suspects and order their immediate arrest on sighting them pending the outcome of the investigation and possible prosecution,” Woji asserted.
