Contempt: Court Summons DMO’s DG, Others
Davidson Iriekpen A Federal High in Lagos yesterday ordered the Director General of the Debt Management Office, Mr. Abraham Nwankwo, to appear in court on May 18, 2015.
Nwankwo had been cited for contempt by Ecobank Nigeria Limited, which accused him of frustrating its effort to recover an alleged debt of about N12billion from an oil marketing firm, First Deepwater Discovery Limited.
Also cited for contempt and summoned by the court is the DMO’s officer directly in charge of processing fuel subsidy claims by oil marketers, Mr. Umaru Abubakar.
Justice Mohammed Yunusa made the summon order on Nwankwo and Abubakar after questioning their representation in court on Tuesday by a private lawyer, Mr. S.E. Omoraghon.
The judge said for any private legal practitioner to represent an official of a public parastatal like the DMO, the fiat of the Attorney General of the Federation and the Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke (SAN), must first be obtained.
Yunusa, consequently, ordered that an officer from the office of the AGF must also appear in court on May 18.
The bank, which claimed that Deepwater Discovery Limited had about N1.8billion subsidy claim with the DMO, had asked the court to order DMO to transfer the money into Deepwater’s account with Ecobank in order to liquidate the company’s indebtedness.
The bank, however, cited Nwankwo and Abubakar for contempt on the claim that DMO refused to comply with the court’s order to transfer N845million, which according to the bank, was the subsidy claim ripe for payment to Deepwater by DMO.
At the resumed proceedings yesterday, Ecobank’s lawyer, Mr. Kunle Ogunba (SAN), noted that DMO was not represented in court just as it was not during the previous hearing.
While raising questions about the representation of Nwankwo and Abubakar by a private lawyer, Ogunba said it would be needful for the AGF to be represented in contempt proceedings against officers of the state.
“My Lord, I submit that it is important that the office of the Attorney General of the Federation be notified of the pending contempt proceedings against his officers, so that we do not take steps that will unwittingly embarrass the government, especially in this unstable political season,” Ogunba said.
But counsel for Deepwater, Mr. D.A. Awosika, who urged the court to give his client three weeks to settle out of court with Ecobank, pleaded that the contempt proceedings against Nwankwo and Abubaker be suspended in view of the move to settle out of court.
Awosika, who added that he already had an application before the court challenging its jurisdiction to entertain the suit, argued that nothing, including the contempt proceedings, ought to be done until his application was decided.
But Justice Yunusa said the court could not overlook the fact that there was an order it made which DMO had refused to obey.
Yunusa granted Deepwater three weeks to pursue out-of- court settlement with Ecobank, but adjourned till May 18 for Nwankwo, Abubakar and a representative of the AGF to appear in court as regards the contempt proceedings.
The bank, through one Ajibola Ajiboye, a deponent to its affidavit, had said: “Contempt of court, being a deliberate disobedience of a court order, is a serious offence, which every court should not allow to go unpunished; this is because treating such an act with levity could lead to total destruction of the entire judicial system and all that the administration of justice stands for.”
But the Principal Operations Officer of DMO, Sandra Ipigansi, in a counter-affidavit, had maintained that Nwankwo and Abubakar could not be jailed for contempt because DMO was never in possession of subsidy claims by Deepwater.
According to Ipigansi, the role of DMO in subsidy claims is more or less administrative, while the money is usually kept and claimed from the Central Bank of Nigeria by the concerned oil marketers.