FG probes N60bn judgment debts

Bolaji Ogundele, Port Harcourt - 11.03.2008

THE Federal Government may have begun investigations into the N60 billion judgment debts hanging on its neck.

Investigations by the Nigerian Tribune revealed that the government was not too sure of the authenticity of the debts and had constituted a committee to verify them.

A source close to the government said that the committee was not to challenge the judgments as the government had agreed to pay the debts, but its findings would help the government to forestall incurring such debts in the future.

According to the source, accumulated judgment debts against ministries and parastatal agencies stood at about N16 billion while the Zaki Biam military invasion alone was N42 billion.

Added to the two was another outstanding N3 billion which the government was already processing.

Said the source, “the judgment debt verification committee has been approved. It is not to challenge the judgments, but to check all existing judgments that are against government because of the rule of law for the government to try and comply with such judgments.

“But in doing that, we are to find out the date of the judgment, the courts where they were issued, whether there were appeals pending or not and the circumstances that made government to incur the judgment.

“For instance, if it is a contract, we will check if the contract was provided for in the budget. This is for internal re-organisation. It has nothing to do with the implementation of the judgment or compliance, but if a judgment arises out of a contract and at the end of the day, the contract was not in the budget, then the officers that got themselves into that kind of transaction will explain why government should not take punitive action.

“Government will also want to know and remedy the situation to prevent a recurrence.

"If we discover that government has released money for the payment of the judgment but it has not been paid, then we will fish out the officer who is responsible for it.”

Explaining the complex nature of government problems with the judgements, the source said “we also discovered that some people were hiding judgments from government. For instance, a ministry will get judgments but it will not tell government because of the circumstances I have earlier explained. We want all the ministries to now submit all pending judgments against them so that government will take an informed decision.

“If you don’t submit a judgment and later we got to hear that there was a pending judgment, then you will explain why it was not submitted. So we want to clean up the system.”

On the membership of the committee, it was gathered that the chairman will be from Ministry of Justice and representatives from the office of the Accountant General of Federation, Ministry of Finance, Police, Nigeria Bar Association and State House Council.

It was also discovered that the last administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo paid $6 million fake judgment debt

According to the source, the payment was made to a foreign oil company by the Federal Government and it was as a result of a judgment by a court.

The source also said that balance of $12 million was ithheld after the Yar’Adua government discovered that a copy of the judgment could not be produced.