The Supreme Court has struck out a suit by the 36 states’ governments and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) challenging the federal government’s utilisation of recovered looted funds, including the sum of N1.8 trillion.
In a judgement 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 judgement prepared by Justice Chidiebere Uwa but read by Justice Mohammed Idris, the apex court held that the 36 states wrongly invoked the court’s 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 36 states had claimed that the sum of N1.8 trillion, about 167 properties, 450 cars, 300 trucks and cargoes, and 20,000,000 barrels of crude oil worth over N450 million, which were allegedly repatriated between 2015 and 2021, were not remitted to the Federation Account but rather diverted into the Consolidated Revenue Account not recognised by the constitution.
They added that other federal earnings payable to the CRAs included receipts from federal government licences 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 the armed forces and others.
They noted that since 2015, “numerous recoveries of illegally acquired assets have been secured through anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies,” including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Nigeria Police Force and the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation.
They cited sections 162(1), 162 (10) and 80 of the constitution and section 2 of the Finance (Control and Management) Act, 1958 in arguing that recovered funds qualify as revenue payable to the Federation Account instead of the Consolidated Revenue Account of the federal government.
They had demanded that the apex court compel the federal government, through the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission (RMFAC), to produce the modalities for distributing recovered assets among the federating units.
