The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit against President Bola Tinubu over “the failure to probe the allegations that $2.1 billion and N3.1 trillion public funds of oil revenues and budgeted as fuel subsidy payments are missing and unaccounted for between 2016 and 2019.”
In a statement on Sunday, SERAP Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, said the suit followed the grim allegations documented by the Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2016 and 2019 annual reports that the public funds are missing.
SERAP is seeking: “an order of mandamus to direct and compel President Tinubu to promptly probe allegations that USD$2.1 billion and N3.1 trillion public funds are missing and unaccounted for between 2016 and 2019.”
In the suit filed last Friday at the Federal High Court in Lagos, the group also seeks “an order of mandamus to compel President Tinubu to direct the anti-corruption agencies to promptly probe fuel subsidy payments made by governments since the return of democracy in 1999, name and shame and prosecute suspected perpetrators, and to recover any proceeds of crimes.”
It also wants the court to compel President Tinubu to use any recovered proceeds of crime as palliatives to address the impact of the subsidy removal on poor Nigerians, and to put in place mechanisms for transparency and accountability in the oil sector.
