A constitutional lawyer and human rights activist, Mike Ozekhome (SAN) has taunted the federal government for its penchant for disobedience to court orders in the wake of a British court’s decision ordering the seizure of Nigeria’s foreign assets to satisfy a judgment debt of $9 billion.
A British court had recently ordered the Nigerian government to pay the sum of $9 billion judgement debt to a British company over failure of the federal government to fulfill its part of an agreement it entered into with the latter in 2014.
He said the United Kingdom is not Nigeria where court orders are flagrantly disobeyed by the government.
Ozekhome urged Nigerians to disregard the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed’s statement that the federal government would not obey the judgment.
“No one should take Lai Mohammed serious when he boastfully asserted that Nigeria will not surrender any of her foreign assets. Really? Did I hear him say “surrender”. Lai easily and shockingly forgets that UK is not Nigeria where court judgement orders are treated with disdain, levity, derision and violated with utmost impunity.
“The judgement creditors will not seek Nigeria’s permission to go after her foreign assets. They will not politely ask Nigeria to “surrender” her assets. No. They will simply use the available, tested and trusted legal option of garnishee proceedings, attach and freeze all available and known Nigerian bank accounts, assets, monies,properties, etc, wherever they find them in the UK and in any part of the world,” Ozekhome said.
He, however, proffered some solutions to the ongoing debate concerning the British court verdict.
According to Ozekhome, the order if executed would cripple the country whose entire 2019 budget is put at N8.92 trillion.
In proffering solutions to the problem, the human rights campaigner said, “The best option thus open to the federal government to halt the looming disaster of attaching her foreign assets to the tune of $9 billion is to immediately appeal the judgement and ask the court for stay of execution.”
He notes that to allow execution of the judgement would plunge Nigeria’s already “battered, pilfered and mismanaged economy into irreversible doldrums and recession of unimaginable proportions.”