The Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has vacated the interim order freezing 124 bank accounts belonging to businesswoman, Aisha Achimugu and companies linked to her, ruling that allowing the ex parte order to remain in force for over 15 months amounted to an abuse of court process.
In a unanimous judgment delivered on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the appellate court comprising Justices Muhammad Ibrahim Sirajo, Ishaq Mohammed Sani and Eleojo Enenche discharged the interim freezing order granted by the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt on April 10, 2025.
The appeal arose from a suit filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, challenging the Federal High Court’s ruling of August 27, 2025.
Justice Turaki Adamu of the Federal High Court had initially granted the EFCC’s ex parte application freezing 124 bank accounts linked to Achimugu, the founder of Oceangate Engineering Oil & Gas Ltd, and restrained banks from allowing outward transactions on the accounts.
Achimugu later applied to set aside the freezing order, arguing that it constituted an abuse of court process. She also informed the court that despite the subsisting order, the EFCC directed SunTrust Bank, through a letter dated April 24, 2025, to transfer funds from one of the frozen accounts to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)/EFCC recovery account.
On August 27, 2025, the Federal High Court ruled that the transfer of N1.8 billion from account number 0001313173 domiciled in SunTrust Bank to the CBN recovery account was unlawful and ordered
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