Precious Elekima, the Social Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate for governor in the general elections of 2019, has filed a lawsuit in the Federal High Court requesting an investigation into the handling of finances by the state’s former governor, Nyesom Wike.
Elekima claimed that Wike misappropriated money that belonged to Rivers. The Incorporated Trustees of Peoples Life Improvement Foundation (PLIF), a group, joined Elekima in the lawsuit under the case number FHC/PH/CS/199/2023.
They asserted that the defendant’s alleged failure to respond to their petition from May 23, 2023, was the reason they chose to initiate the lawsuit.
They asked the court to order the inspector general of police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related crimes Commission (ICPC) to investigate Wike’s eight years of spending money and the banks he used to carry out some of his projects.
The lawsuit claims that Wike “conspired with officials of the Rivers state public service and officials of the fifth to sixteenth respondents (the banks) to fraudulently withdraw and encash the enormous sum of N117,000,000,000 funds belonging to the Rivers state government in excess of the threshold permitted by existing laws and financial regulations with intent to misappropriate and divert same and did in fact divert same for his personal benefit.”
Additionally, they asserted that Wike engaged in “fraudulent withdrawal, laundering, and embezzlement of enormous monies from the Rivers state internally produced revenue collected and housed in multiple accounts with the fifth to sixteenth respondents.”
