The Court of Appeal in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has delivered a major setback to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in its prolonged financial restrictions against businesswoman Aisha Achimugu, declaring the continued freezing of 124 bank accounts linked to her an abuse of court process and a subversion of the rule of law.
In a unanimous judgment, a three-member panel of the appellate court discharged and vacated the ex parte order obtained by the EFCC more than 15 months earlier to freeze the accounts of Achimugu and several corporate entities associated with her.
The court also overturned the Federal High Court’s order directing the reversal of ₦1.8 billion transferred from a SunTrust Bank account to a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)/EFCC recovery account.
However, the appellate court’s decision did not validate the EFCC’s transfer of the money, leaving open the question of the legal basis upon which the anti-graft agency moved the funds.
The judgment was delivered by Justice Muhammad Ibrahim Sirajo, who sat with Justices Ishaq Mohammed Sani and Eleojo Enenche.
How the dispute began
The case dates back to April 10, 2025, when the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, presided over by Justice Turaki Adamu, granted an ex parte application by the EFCC to freeze 124 bank accounts allegedly linked to Achimugu, a businesswoman and founder of Oceangate Engineering Oil & Gas Ltd.
The order directed the affected banks to restrict outward transactions from the accounts.
But the freezing order soon became the subject of another legal battle after Achimugu challenged its continued enforcement.
She alleged, among other things, that the EFCC had directed SunTrust Bank, through a letter dated April 24, 2025, to transfer funds from one of the frozen accounts into a CBN/EFCC recovery account even though the freezing order was still in force.
The controversy escalated when the Federal High Court, on August 27, 2025, ordered the reversal of ₦1.8 billion transferred from account number 0001313173 domiciled with SunTrust Bank.
Justice Adamu held the transfer to be illegal and directed that the money be returned.
The EFCC challenged that decision at the Court of Appeal.
Appeal exposes account identity discrepancies
The appellate court agreed with the EFCC on one crucial point but, in doing so, exposed what it considered a fundamental evidentiary problem in the lower court’s handling of the accounts.
The court found that the accounts expressly captured by the April 10, 2025 freezing order included current accounts belonging to Drive.FGC.Net and Felak Concepts Ltd.
According to the judgment, Drive.FGC.Net’s current account carried a balance of ₦50,518,009.57, while Felak Concepts Ltd’s account had ₦16,220,608.37.
But the ₦1.8 billion that became the centre of the dispute was held in a fixed deposit account, while another ₦7.79 billion was linked to internal ledger account numbers 2010155010 and 2010155011.
The appellate court questioned the lower court’s treatment of the accounts as identical.
It pointedly observed that the trial court had failed to explain how an account holding about ₦50 million could at the same time have yielded ₦1.8 billion for transfer.
The implication was decisive: the account containing the ₦1.8 billion was not among those expressly covered by the original freezing order.
The Court of Appeal therefore set aside the order directing the reversal of the ₦1.8 billion.
But it carefully stopped short of giving the EFCC a clean bill of health.
The appellate court expressly stated that its decision did not amount to a declaration that the EFCC’s decision to transfer the money was lawful.
That distinction could prove significant in any subsequent legal proceedings over the disputed funds.
EFCC loses battle over prolonged freezing order
While the EFCC succeeded on the question of the ₦1.8 billion, it suffered a more consequential defeat over the continued freezing of the 124 accounts.
The anti-graft agency had argued that the Federal High Court acted improperly by delivering its ruling during the annual vacation and that it had been denied fair hearing.
The Court of Appeal rejected both arguments.
Justice Sirajo held that delivering a reserved judgment during the court’s annual vacation did not amount to the conduct of general legal business and did not occasion a miscarriage of justice.
On fair hearing, the court noted that both sides had filed further affidavits and counter-affidavits on the disputed transfer.
The court concluded that the parties had been adequately heard.
But the appellate court drew a firm constitutional and procedural line over the continued use of the ex parte order.
It held that such an order is intended to be temporary, principally to preserve disputed funds pending the hearing and determination of the substantive application.
Allowing the freezing order to remain in force for more than 15 months, the court held, amounted to an abuse of court process and a subversion of the rule of law.
Court draws line under EFCC’s prolonged restrictions
The appellate court consequently discharged and vacated in its entirety the April 10, 2025 ex parte order freezing and restricting the accounts of Achimugu and the corporate entities associated with her.
The ruling effectively ends the interim restrictions that had kept the accounts frozen for more than a year.
The judgment also exposes a deeper procedural issue in the use of ex parte financial restrictions: an order intended as a short-term preservation mechanism cannot, in the court’s view, be allowed to morph into an open-ended restraint without the substantive case being properly determined.
For the EFCC, the ruling is therefore a mixed outcome.
It won a reversal of the Federal High Court’s order concerning the ₦1.8 billion after successfully establishing that the account from which the money was transferred was not captured by the original freezing order.
But it lost the broader battle to sustain the 124-account freeze, with the Court of Appeal branding its prolonged operation an abuse of court process.
The court consequently allowed the EFCC’s appeal only in part: the first two issues were resolved against the commission, while the third issue concerning the evaluation and identity of the accounts was resolved in its favour.
Aisha Achimugu
