The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu over “the failure to probe the allegations that $2.1 billion and N3.1 trillion public funds of oil revenues and budgeted as fuel subsidy payments are missing and unaccounted for between 2016 and 2019.”
In a statement on Sunday, SERAP Deputy
Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, said the suit followed the grim allegations
documented by the Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2016 and 2019 annual
reports that the public funds are missing.
SERAP is seeking: “an order of mandamus to
direct and compel President Tinubu to promptly probe allegations that USD$2.1
billion and N3.1 trillion public funds are missing and unaccounted for between
2016 and 2019.”
In the suit number FHC/L/CS/1107/23 filed
last Friday at the Federal High Court in Lagos, the group also seeks “an order
of mandamus to compel President Tinubu to direct the anti-corruption agencies
to promptly probe fuel subsidy payments made by governments since the return of
democracy in 1999, name and shame and prosecute suspected perpetrators, and to
recover any proceeds of crimes.”
It also ants the court to compel President
Tinubu to use any recovered proceeds of crime as palliatives to address the
impact of the subsidy removal on poor Nigerians, and to put in place mechanisms
for transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
“The allegations that US$2.1 billion and N3.1
trillion of public funds are missing and unaccounted amount to a fundamental
breach of national anticorruption laws and the country’s international
obligations including under the UN Convention against Corruption to which
Nigeria is a state party,” the statement read.
“The Tinubu government has constitutional and
international legal obligations to get to the bottom of these allegations and
ensure accountability for these serious crimes against the Nigerian people.”
According to SERAP, directing and compelling
President Tinubu to promptly probe, name and shame and bring to justice the
perpetrators and to recover any missing public funds would advance the right of
Nigerians to restitution, compensation and guarantee of non-repetition.
“Allegations of corruption in fuel subsidy
payments suggest that the poor have rarely benefited from the use and
management of the payments,” the group stated.
The suit filed on behalf of SERAP by its
lawyers, Kolawole Oluwadare, Ms Adelanke Aremo, Ms Valentina Adegoke, and
Ayomide Johnson, read in part: “There will be no economic growth or
sustainability without accountability for the human rights crimes.”
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the
suit.
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