Rochas Okorocha drags EFCC to court, demands N1 Billion damages

  Detained former governor of Imo state, Rochas Okorocha, has filed suit before the Federal High Court in Abuja, demanding N1billion from t...

 

Detained former governor of Imo state, Rochas Okorocha, has filed suit before the Federal High Court in Abuja, demanding N1billion from the Economic and Finance Crimes Commission, EFCC, alleging gross violation of his fundamental human rights.

Okorocha, in the suit he filed through a team of lawyers led by Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, and sighted by NigerianEye on Monday night, had aside from asking for monetary compensation as examplary damages against the anti-graft agency, equally demanded a public apology, to be published in at least three national dalies.

He cited the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN, as the 2nd defendant in the matter.

The applicant, is among other things, praying the court to declare that the seige the EFCC laid on his house without any legal justification, was unconstitutional and a flagrant abuse of his fundamental human rights.

He is seeking a declaration that “the attempt on the life of the applicant by the 1st respondent (EFCC), through the officers working under them who shot sporadically at the applicant’s compound, broke into the applicant’s home through the rooftop all the way into his bedroom and immediately apprehended the applicant’s family members’ phones including that of the applicant on the 24th day of May, is illegal…”

Okorocha alleged that EFCC operatives had after they besieged his home, cut off electricity supply, manhandled his domestic staff and relatives after some of their handsets were seized.

He applied for an order of injunction restraining the respondents (jointly or severally) from intimidating him, threatening his life, arresting or detaining him.

In an affidavit that was deposed to by his daughter, the applicant, told the court that EFCC’s action against him ran contrary to a subsisting judgement that barred the agency from arresting or detaining him.

It will be recalled that the former governor was on May 24, arrested by operatives of the EFCC in an operation that lasted over seven hours.

The arrest followed his alleged refusal to make himself available for trial on a 17-count money laundering charge that was entered against him and six others.

Okorocha, who was accused of complicity in the illegal diversion of funds from the Imo state treasury totaling over N2.9billion, was subsequently arraigned before trial Justice Inyang Ekwo on Monday alongside a chieftain of the All Progressive, APC, Anyim Nyerere Chinenye and five companies- Naphtali International Limited, Perfect Finish Multi Projects Limited, Consolid Projects Consulting Limited, Pramif International Limited, and Legend World Concepts Limited.

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