Court bars EFCC from prosecuting Odili

Bolaji Ogundele, Port Harcourt - 06.03.2008

FORMER Rivers State governor, Dr Peter Odili, was on Wednesday saved from suffering a the fate of some of his former colleagues at the hands of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) as a Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt granted a perpetual injunction restraining the body from arresting and disseminating its report on the governor's tenure.

Dr Odili had sought an injunction from the court to restrain the EFCC from arresting, detaining, arraigning and prosecuting him for alleged financial misconduct while he was governor.

Delivering the judgement yesterday, Justice Ibrahim Buba, faulted the anti-graft body for failing to seek the vacation of an earlier judgment on the matter and thus ordered that the report of the commission on the governor's tenure should not be made public and that the body had no right to take any action against the former governor.

"In the light of the final and subsisting judgment of the Federal High Court in suit No FHC/PH/CS/78/2007, a declaration that the second defendant cannot arrest, detain, arraign and/or prosecute the plaintiff on the basis of the alleged investigations conducted into the affairs of Rivers State between 29th May, 1999 and 29th May 2007, is hereby made.