The Supreme Court Friday dismissed an appeal filed by former First Lady Dame Patience Jonathan seeking to set aside temporary forfeiture of N9.2 billion and $8.4 million traced to her by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) .
The Apex Court technically upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal in Lagos, which affirmed the Federal High Court’s interim order.
Dame Jonathan had prayed the Supreme Court to set aside the forfeiture order granted by the Federal High Court in Lagos in April 2018. But a five-man panel of the apex court, led by Justice Dattijo Muhammad, in a unanimous judgment, dismissed her appeal.
In a ruling prepared by Justice Kumai Aka’ahs and delivered by Ejembi Eko, the apex court ordered Dame Jonathan to return to the trial court and show cause why the funds should not be permanently forfeited to the federal government. Justice Eko insisted that the Supreme Court had no reason to interfere with the decision of the lower courts.
The court also rejected her prayer to strike down the provisions of section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud Act and other Fraud related offences Act, which was relied on by the Federal High Court to issue the order of interim forfeiture.
Two other members of the five-man panel, John Okoro and Justice Sidi Bage, agreed with Justice Aka’ah’s lead judgment.
It would be recalled that Justice Mojisola Olatoregun of the Federal High Court in Lagos had, on 8th April, 2018, granted a motion ex parte for the interim forfeiture of the sum of funds and other various sums in various bank accounts linked to the former First Lady.
Olatoregun also ordered the EFCC to publish the court’s order in any major national newspaper to enable the respondents or anyone interested in the funds to appear before the court to show cause within 14 days why the final order of forfeiture of the said funds should not be made in favour of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
EFCC, in its application anchored on section 17 of AFFA, had urged the court to grant an order of interim forfeiture of the funds which, it said, were suspected to be proceeds of unlawful activities.
However, counsel to Patience Jonathan, Ifedayo Adedipe (SAN) had presented three issues for the apex court. He urged the court to determine whether section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Related Offences Act 2006, which permits the EFCC to seize assets that are suspected to have been unlawfully acquired, is not in conflict with provisions of the 1999 constitution that guarantees the presumption of innocence of accused persons.
Adedipe had argued that section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud Act gave EFCC the nod to approach a court to seize assets it considered “suspicious”, without notifying the owner.
He said section 6 of the Act provided that seizure and forfeiture of such assets must not be based on conviction for crime, arguing that it was wrong for the anti-graft agency to rely on mere suspicion to seize funds traced to the ex-First Lady.
On his part, the EFCC, through its lawyer, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo, had urged the apex court to dismiss the appeal as grossly lacking in merit, insisting that Mrs Jonathan’s contentions were based on misconception of the law.
EFCC maintained that it had powers under the law to seize assets that are “reasonably suspected to have been acquired with proceeds of unlawful activities”.
