A Federal High Court in Kaduna has dismissed an application by the Federal Government for stay of execution of the court's earlier judgment which declared as illegal government's decision to freeze bank accounts of late General Sani Abacha and his family. Dismissing the application yesterday in his ruling on the matter, President of the court, Justice Abdullahi Liman, also challenged the Attorney-General of the Federation to make good his threat to report him (Liman) to the National Judicial Council over the Abacha case. He awarded N5,000 costs against the Federal Government and accused government's counsel, Samuel Omonokpo, of incompetence in his management of the case. Specifically, according to Liman, the defendant was not diligent on the important legal issue which required careful approach. According to him, "the defendant needed to establish a good ground to enable me exercise my discretion to grant a stay of execution. For now, they have failed and the application is bound to fail and it is accordingly dismissed." Liman noted that the monies in question were in the banks and probably yielding interests. According to him, government only needed to comply with the due process in the freezing of the accounts. Liman said, "The amounts involved in the request for transfer are in the custody of these (foreign) countries and there is no contention that if the defendant/applicant is not allowed to transfer the monies to its custody, the monies will either disappear or depreciate. "It seems that as long as these proceedings continue in the courts, the monies will not only remain in the banks but may probably yield interests that may become due to the defendant/applicant, after complying with the due process as stipulated in the judgment of this court. "The case of Oyo State government versus Akinyemi supra following the case of Vaswani versus Savalakin presents the correct principle of law relating to the grounds on which a stay of proceedings can be granted and one fundamental issue in this case is the destructibility of the res. "But since counsel for the applicant prevaricated so much in that all important ground; counsel failed to show how the res will be destroyed. "His allegation about Abacha's illegal organisation using the judgment to perpetuate their illegal and fraudulent activities is not only puerile but a sardonic approach to an important legal issue." The court had on September 24, 2004 declared as null and void, Federal Government's decision to freeze the accounts of the late General Sani Abacha and his family.
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