Court adjourns suit challenging freezing of #EndSARS campaigners’ account
The Federal High Court in Abuja has adjourned the applications filed by 20 #EndSARS campaigners challenging the order freezing their bank accounts till after the expiration of the court’s 90-day restriction.
PREMIUM TIMES reports that the order freezing the accounts was issued by the court at the instance of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on November 4, 2020.
Since the order expires on February 4, 2021, the court on Tuesday, adjourned the continuation of the defendants’ application seeking the reversal of the freezing order till February 10.
This implies that the court will only be ready to hear the application almost one week after the order defendants are challenging will be deemed to have expired.
Stalled
The hearing of the application raising issues of rights violation was stalled for the third time on Tuesday.
The judge, Ahmed Mohammed, was to hear the defendants’ application challenging the order on December 8, 2020 and adjourn for judgment.
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Mr Mohammed started the hearing on December 8, but despite sitting till about 6 p.m. that day, he was unable conclude the hearing because he had earlier devoted most of his sitting hours of the day to the hearing of the pre-election case filed by the All Progressives Congress (APC) against Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State.
The judge, who gave the political case a marathon hearing till he delivered judgment on January 5, had adjourned the continuation of the #EndSARS campaigners’ application till December 9, but the court could not hear it because it clashed with the Edo State case that day.
The case was then adjourned till Tuesday, but Mr Ahmed did not sit, as he was said to have been granted a vacation to make up for the period he spent hearing the time-bound Edo State case during the Christmas break observed by his other colleagues.
Speaking with PREMIUM TIMES on the issue on Tuesday, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who is defending 19 of the 20 defendants said “the order lapses on February 4, and the adjournment of the case till February 10 will make the case academic”.
Efforts by our reporter to speak with Michael Aondoakaa, a former Attorney-General of the Federation, who obtained the ex parte order against the 20 defendants on behalf of CBN, were unsuccessful as several calls placed to his regular telephone line indicated that it was switched off.
A text message also sent to the same line had also not delivered as of press time on Tuesday.
