NATIONAL: Supreme court dismisses appeal by Abacha’s brother to unfreeze accounts

THE Supreme Court, on Friday, turned down the  request to unfreeze accounts traced to the relatives of  a former Head of States, Gen. Sani Abacha, in  the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Jersey, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg.

The request was made by Alhaji Ali Abacha who is a brother to the late dictator.

According to court documents, the then President, Olusegun Obasanjo, in December 1999, authorized the then AGF, Agabi to request the Swiss authorities to freeze all bank accounts held in its jurisdiction by the late Head of State, General Abacha, his children, servants, agents and any other individuals or companies liked to them between 1993 and 1998.

The Nigeria government was also said to have requested the Swiss authorities to seize and detain all banking and other documents relating to the affected accounts, charge and prosecute all holders of such accounts, in order to recover and pay over to the Federal Government of Nigeria all monies falsely and fraudulently taken from the government and people of Nigeria.

Also, the FG was said to have engaged a foreign financial investigator, Enrico Monfrini of Hauchomann & Bottage in Geneva, Switzerland, to assist in recovering “all looted monies by Gen Abacha and his family members and other public servants and third parties who have used their position or participated as accomplices to misappropriate public funds.”

But Alhaji Ali Abacha had sued at the Federal High Court, Kaduna in 2004, challenging among others, the 1999 decision by the Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration.

Justice Liman, in his judgment on September 24, 2004, upheld the claims by Ali Abacha and granted all the reliefs sought, a decision the AGF, listed as the sole defendant, appealed at the Court of Appeal, Kaduna division.

After many legal rigmarole In their judgment on July 19, 2010, Justices John Inyang Okoro, Baba Alikali Ba’aba and Mohammed Lawal Garba of the Court of Appeal, Kaduna, in the appeal marked: CA/K/71/2005, were unanimous in holding that the suit was statute-barred.

They equally held that the AGF was not accorded fair hearing by the Federal High Court, and proceeded to set aside the judgment by Justice Liman, a decision Ali Abacha appealed to the Supreme Court, which the apex court decided on Friday.

However, the apex court in a unanimous judgment of a five-man panel led by Justice Sylvester Ngwuta held that Ali Abacha’s case was statute-barred as at when it was commenced in April 2004 at the Federal High Court in Kaduna State.

In the lead judgment prepared by Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, but read on Friday by Justice Ejembi Eko, the court held that having dismissed a similar appeal in an earlier judgment given in February last year, it has no reason to depart from its reasoning that case brought by Alhaji Abba Mohammed Sani on behalf of the Abacha family.

The court said it noticed that the appellant in this appeal is represented by R. O. Atabo Esq, who, incidentally, was the appellant’s counsel in the earlier appeal.

“No new superior arguments were proferred here to warrant a departure from the decision in the case of Alhaji Sani, earlier decided. This appeal fails, and it is hereby dismissed. Parties to bear their costs”, the apex court said.