The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has sued President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for “failure to investigate allegations that $2.1 billion and ₦3.1 trillion in public funds from oil revenues and budgeted as fuel subsidy payments are missing and unaccounted for between 2016 and 2019.”
SERAP Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, said in a statement on Sunday that the suit followed the dismal claims revealed by the Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2016 and 2019 annual reports that 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 ₦3.1 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 further requests that the court require President Tinubu to utilize any seized proceeds of crime as palliatives to alleviate the impact of subsidy reduction on poor Nigerians, as well as to establish procedures for transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
“The allegations that US$2.1 billion and ₦3.1 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 obliging President Tinubu to immediately investigate, name and humiliate the culprits, and bring them to justice, as well as recover any missing public funds, would promote Nigerians’ right to restitution, compensation, and the 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,” according to the group.
According to the action filed on behalf of SERAP by its lawyers, Kolawole Oluwadare, Ms Adelanke Aremo, Ms Valentina Adegoke, and Ayomide Johnson, “there will be no economic growth or sustainability without accountability for the human rights crimes.”
The suit’s hearing date has not been set.
