A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered banks to freeze the accounts of 32 persons and companies linked to the August 1 #EndBadGovernance protest.
Nigerian youths had commenced a nationwide protest dubbed ’10 days of rage’ with the hashtag #EndBadGovernance against economic hardship and soaring inflation in the country.
Following an ex-parte motion moved by Ibrahim Mohammed, counsel for the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Emeka Nwite, the Presiding Judge, ordered the banks to apprehend the account holders or any person transacting business on the said accounts allegedly linked to the protesters.
“That 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,” Nwite said.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, the ruling was made on August 20 but the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the order was made public on Sunday in Abuja.
“The I-G, in the application marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/1219/2024, had listed PA.LIN.HO Global Service Ltd, Innocent Angel Lovet Chinyere Nkiru, Obidient Movement Multipurpose Cooperative Society, Innocent Angel Lovet, Great Communicators Champion Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd as 1st to 5th respondents respectively.
“Others include Great Communicators Champion Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd, Opaluwa Eleojo Bob-Simon, NUEE State Chapter, Adeyemi Abiodun Abayomi, Adaramoye Michael Tobiloba, Popoola Festus as 6th to 11th respondents respectively,” the CTC read.
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Mohammed said the accounts are subject of investigation and are reasonably suspected to be warehousing proceeds of unlawful activities or fraud.
He said the accounts were used to promote the offense of criminal conspiracy, terrorism financing, treasonable felony, cyberbullying and cyberstalking.
“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.
“That the accused persons were involved in hosting another country’s flag in order to undermine the sovereignty of the Nigerian state,” Mohammed said.
In the affidavit in support of the motion, Gregory Woji, a detective attached to Force Criminal Investigation Department, said preliminary investigation revealed that some suspects arrested were being recruited by some financiers to cause mayhem and destroy lives and property.
He added that the protest financiers were sending money to recruit the indigents and other vulnerable individuals to carry banners and overthrow a democratically elected government.
Woji said some foreign nationals were the “harrow head in the unscrupulous act of treasonable felony and promoting terrorism financing in Nigeria”.
“That it will be in the interest of justice to grant this request by freezing the account of the said suspects and ordering their immediate arrest on sighting them pending the outcome of the investigation and possible prosecution,” Woji told the court.
