Court vacates order on Jimoh Ibrahim’s seized assets over ‘N69.4bn debt’

A federal high court in Abuja has set aside an order granting the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), permission to take over assets belonging to Jimoh Ibrahim, a Nigerian businessman, over alleged N69.4 billion debt.

Okon Abang, presiding judge, while ruling on an ex parte application by AMCON on January 4, had granted leave to AMCON to seize some assets belonging to Ibrahim in order to recover the said N69. 4 billion debt.

But the business mogul and his firms NICON Investment Ltd and Global Fleet Oil and Gas Ltd had in another application, challenged the court’s order on the grounds of “non-disclosure and misrepresentation of material facts.”

Delivering ruling on Monday, the judge agreed that AMCON had concealed facts relating to the case in order to obtain an interim order.

According to the judge, there is a subsisting ruling of a federal high court in Lagos delivered in 2016 which restrained AMCON from taking over the defendant’s property pending final determination of the matter.

He said that the 2016 ruling which has neither been appealed against nor vacated, renders his order of January 4, 2021, a nullity.

Consequently, Abang vacated his January 4 order.

In a different suit, however, Rilwan Aikawa, judge of a Lagos federal high court, on February 16, turned down Ibrahim’s application seeking to vacate the order of the court through which AMCON also seized his properties.

The judge, in his ruling, upheld the arguments of AMCON’s lawyer, Kemi Pinheiro, a senior advocate of Nigeria, that AMCON made “full and substantial disclosure of all material facts” at the time of obtaining the orders on November 4, 2020.