BY BIMPE ADEYEMI
AN order by an Abuja High Court, on Wednesday, garnishing all state and local government bank accounts has crippled the activities of Benue State Government, officials have said.
All the 23 bank accounts of the state government and its parastatals in seven commercial banks were affected by the order, over a judgement debt of N1.148billion.
The Commissioner for Information in the state, Ngunan Addingi, at a joint briefing with the Commissioner for Justice, Micheal Gusa, said the order followed an application brought before the court by Julianna Igweka and 95 others against the Benue State Universal Basic Education Board and the Attorney General of Benue State.
Igweka and others had approached the court for a leave to enforce the judgment of the Benue State High Court in a suit number MHC/227/2007.
Addingi said, “The affected persons took the state government to court and in 2008 judgement was given that the matter should be looked into and they be reabsorbed into the Benue state civil service.
“Unfortunately instead of them to wait and follow due process to be reabsorbed, they decided to go to court to ask that they be paid a certain amount of money.
“Some of these people actually went back to their states and took up appointments but are still fighting the Benue state government.
“And in 2012 Benue state government went back to court and got a judgement that ruled that they could not make monetary demands since the issue from the onset was not about monetary demands but to be reabsorbed back to service.
“One of their lawyers, Mr Ocha Ulegede, took the matter to a Nasarawa State High Court and another lawyer also approached an Abuja High Court on this same matter.
“November this year they got a judgement to garnish the accounts of the state. The government wrote back that they could not garnish the accounts because they were out of jurisdiction.
“An order was again issued yesterday garnishing all the state and local government bank accounts.
“This is saddening since the government is supposed to be paying salaries ahead of the Yuletide festivities and the banks do not know these details because as long as they bring a court order to them they garnish them.
“It is unfortunate because tomorrow is Christmas and Monday is a public holiday, it is quite sad.”
The state government has however commenced the process of appealing the order, officials said.
