Another reason the judgment against Orji Uzo Kalu is wrong

The court found that Orji Uzor Kalu (OUK) embezzled 7.3 billion. That is the amount of public fund the court said he embezzled.

The court then ordered for one (only one) of OUK businesses (SLOK HOLDING) to be liquidated and the proceeds of the liquidation sale forfeited to the Federal Government, and nothing more.

You don’t really need to be a lawyer to challenge the reasoning behind such judgment. Now, let’s consider the following questions that the court ignored:

(1) How much will SLOK be worth after it has been liquidated? What is the fair market value of its assets? Will it be exactly 7.3 billion or will it be more or less?

(2) If it is more (like 10 billion), what happens to the 2.7 billion excess? And if it is less (like 5 billion) what happens to the 2.3 billion deficit?

(3) So, does it not mean that after the liquidation of SLOK, there has to be an accounting in order to determine whether the proceeds of the liquidation sale is more or less than the 7.3 billion?

(4) Without providing for an accounting to be done as to the value of SLOK, it means that the court has awarded an unknown and unknowable amount of money (the proceeds of  the sale of SLOK) against a known amount of embezzled funds (7.3 billion).

(5) Is OUK the only shareholder of SLOK? If even his wife or mother holds even 1% share in SLOK, the court can only sell the shares of OUK, and not the entire company. In other words, the court cannot sell anything in SLOK that doesn’t belong to OUK.

(6) Based on that flawed judgment, EFCC has sealed off the Sun Newspaper, which is an entity on its own. There are many questions:

(a) Is the Sun Newspaper wholly owned by SLOK and is therefore covered by the judgment?

(b) If anybody else, including OUK in his personal capacity, owns even 1% of the shares of Sun Newspaper, then the judgment does not cover the Sun Newspaper company, but only the shares of SLOK in the Sun can be attached. So, you can’t be sealing the company. This is because the court limited the judgment to SLOK.

(c) EFCC knows that OUK is going on appeal. The judgment is only one week old. The judgment has not even been enrolled and the EFCC is wasting effort even though it knows there will be an order of stay. Why the gragra?

(d) Of all the businesses controlled by OUK, why is his newspaper the first to seal? Is it not to prevent him from using his paper to counter some of the lies peddled against him?

(7) Based on the judgment, EFCC is sealing the houses of OUK. But the order is limited to the interest of SLOK. Unless those houses can be said to be owned by SLOK, they cannot be sealed based on the judgment because the judgment did not send them after the assets of OUK, but rather the assets of SLOK.

The judgment of Justice Idris is a travesty and it will be set aside on appeal for many reasons.