The Kogi State government has filed a suit against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over allegations that it fixed N19.3 billion bailout funds received from the Federal Government.
This is as Justice J. J. Majebi of a Kogi State High Court granted an interim injunction restraining the EFCC from issuing further official or unofficial publications on the issue involving Sterling Bank Account number 0073572696 or any other account purportedly belonging to the Kogi State government, TheNation writes.
The state government; the Accountant-General of the state, Momoh Jibrin; and Commissioner for Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Asiwaju Mukadam Asiru, were claimants in the suit, while the EFCC, Sterling Bank and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) were listed as defendants.
The government is demanding “N35 billion only as damages against the first defendant for the defamatory publication, titled: ‘Hidden N19.3 billion Kogi salary bailout funds returned to CBN’ allegedly made on November 19, 2021, on the commission’s Facebook page.
The motion on notice shall be heard on December 17, 2021, according to the court.
The state government asked for “an order of this honourable court compelling the first defendant to, within 48 hours of the order of this court, publish in three national dailies a retraction of her frivolous allegations and also tender unreserved apology to the Claimant for the defamatory publication written against the claimant”.
While asking the court to declare the publication as “misconceived, wrongful, illegal, null and void”, the plaintiff also asked the court to declare that the conduct of the second defendant (Sterling Bank) was wrong, illegal, null and void in opening a fixed deposit account number 0073572696 and naming it Kogi bailout account without an application, request, authority or consent of the government.
The Kogi State government had threatened to take the EFCC to court if the commission failed to retract and apologise over statements it continually made in the media with the aim of disparaging the state.
Particularly, the government said it could not understand how the EFCC kept attributing an account number to the state, even after Sterling Bank had written to explain that there was never a time it gave the bank the mandate to open the said account.
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