FHC chief judge: Why bank accounts of #EndSARS protesters were frozen

John Tsoho, chief judge of the federal high court, has given reasons why the court froze the bank accounts of #EndSARS protesters.

The federal high court had frozen bank accounts belonging to individuals who promoted the #EndSARS protests.

Speaking on Tuesday at a ceremony to mark the federal high court’s 2020/2021 legal year, the chief judge said the names attached to the bank accounts were not those of individuals but of corporate organisations.

“Three months before the protest, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) kept bringing applications, almost in their hundreds, based on what they call deliberate resolve to ruin the economy through money laundering,” he said.

“But the names were mostly of corporate bodies. So if it was the #EndSars people who started that arrangement undercover, then it is unfortunate. So maybe in the course of issuing those orders, they were uncovered.

“I’m sorry, I may have breached security but I wouldn’t know because it is very irritating for people to fail to verify news and just come up with damaging allegations.

“From what I gathered, if that step was not taken, the Nigerian economy could have collapsed at that point in time.

“The dollar would have already exchanged for far above N500. So it was that discovery that prompted the CBN to bring those applications and the orders granted temporarily saved the situation.”