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- $12.4bn Oil windfall: Court adjourns judgement
Posted by : Unknown
Friday, November 23, 2012
An Abuja Federal High Court on Friday failed to deliver judgement in the suit over the missing $12.4bn oil windfall.
The court had scheduled judgement in the
matter for Friday, but the Presiding Judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole,
eventually adjourned the judgement to Nov. 29, 2012.
The judgement had also been postponed on previous occasions.
The Socio-Economic Rights and
Accountability Project and five other groups, represented by Chief Femi
Falana, instituted the suit against the Federal Government.
When the court resumed on Friday, the
judge disclosed that the judgement was not ready as his attention had
just been drawn to a fresh application filed by the AGF, challenging the
jurisdiction of the court.
SERAP noted that it had received, and responded to the application.
Kolawole thus said that he would study the processes in his chamber, and deliver the judgement on Nov. 29.
The defendants are asking the court to
dismiss the suit, arguing that only the Attorney General of the
Federation, as a defender of public interest, had the right to seek
information on the spending of the $12.4bn oil windfall and that the
plaintiffs have no such right.
But the plaintiffs insisted that it was
the failure of the AGF to carry out his duty in that respect that
prompted their legal action against the FG in the first place.
A coalition of six civil society groups,
led by SERAP, had in Sept. 2010, sued the AGF and the Central Bank of
Nigeria, seeking information on how the $12.4bn oil windfall was spent.
The other plaintiffs in the suit are the
Women Advocates and Documentation Centre; Human and Environmental
Development Agenda; Access to Justice; Partnership for Justice, and
Committee for the Defence of Human Rights.