Supreme Court Throws Out Suit by Late Abacha’s Family to Unfreeze His Foreign Accounts

Malik Yahya/

The Supreme Court today dismissed an appeal by the family of the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, praying for an order to unfreeze some bank accounts linked to the late dictator and other members of the family in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Jersey, Liechenstein and Luxembourg.

The accounts were frozen as a consequence of mutual judicial assistance agreements signed with the countries by the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.

Delivering judgement in the appeal filed by a son of the late dictator, Mohammed Abacha, a five-man panel of the apex court led by Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, unanimously held that the suit, which was first initiated before the Federal High Court in Kano in January 2004, had become statute-barred.

In the lead judgment by Justice Chima Nweze, the apex affirmed the concurrent decisions of both the Federal High Court in Kano and the Court of Appeal in Kaduna, which had both dismissed the suit for being statute-barred.