DSS Defied Several Court Orders, Deceitfully Obtained My Detention Warrant – Ubah

The High Court in Abu­ja will give its ruling tomorrow on the ap­plication made by Dr Patrick Ifeanyi Ubah to end his continued detention by the De­partment of State Service (DSS).

Ubah, the Chairman of Cap­ital Oil and Gas Industries Ltd, has been detained for weeks by the DSS following a commercial transaction between Capital Oil and the Nigerian National Petro­leum Corporation (NNPC).

The DSS has defied several court orders to produce the oil mogul in court.

Ubah, on Tuesday, told Jus­tice Yusuf Haliru of an Abuja High Court, sitting in Jabi, that the DSS fraudulently obtained an ex-parte order from the court to keep him in detention for no just cause.

 Ubah, through his lawyer, Mrs. Ifeoma Esom, urged Jus­tice Haliru to vacate the ex-par­te order of 10th May, which the court made, granting the request of the DSS to detain him for 14 days.
Ubah posited that “The ex-parte order of this honourable court made on the 10th day of May, 2017 was obtained upon suppression of material facts”.
In an application brought pursuant to Section 298 (2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, Ubah’s lawyer, Mrs Esom, affirmed that: “Cap­ital Oil and Gas Ltd (COG) of which the respondent is the CEO has always been one of the Nige­rian National Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC’s) largest Throughput providers and this is evidenced by Throughput agreements entered into between NNPC subsidiaries and COG over the years”.
“These throughput agree­ments, in accordance with the norms and practices in the indus­try worldwide, allow conversion and diversion of products by the ‘Operator’ so long as the Opera­tor is prepared to re-deliver the products (in terms of the current contract) within seven days of de­mand by the products owner or to pay a penalty for non-redelivery”.
“The penalty to re-deliver is expressly stated by the contract to be a mere breach of contract re­mediable by the payment of pen­alty to the owner. The penalty is comprised of the cost of deliv­ery of the products to the oper­ator’s tank farm with interest at Nibor+1”.
“There can therefore be no issue of crime in conversion or diversion of products under a throughput contract (regardless of the ordinary connotations of those words).”
The DSS, based on a report made to it by the NNPC over the purely civil dispute arising out of the alleged indebtedness of COG to the NNPC, arrested Ubah from his house in Lagos on March 24, 2017 and kept him in its custody until April 14, 2017, when he was temporarily and conditionally re­leased after he had been coerced into making a payment of N2 bil­lion and executing various docu­ments in favour of the NNPC and Assets Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON).
However, Esom told the court that Ubah, upon return to his home in Lagos, in fear for his life and liberty should he renew his claims that he is not indebted to either NNPC Retail Ltd or AM­CON as he had maintained be­fore his incarceration, instructed his counsel to file an application for the enforcement of his funda­mental human rights.
When the suit came up before the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court on April 27, 2017, the court granted him leave to serve the originating processes on the DSS outside Lagos whereupon the originating processes were served on them on April 28, 2017.
According to Esom, “Not­withstanding the pendency of the suit and the service of the origi­nating processes, the DSS again invited the respondent to report to its offices in respect of the same allegations made by the NNPC and AMCON which is the sub­ject-matter of the suit. On May 5, 2017, the DSS arrested Ubah in Lagos and moved him to their Abuja office”.
Based on this development, Ubah’s lawyers filed a motion ex-parte on May 8 seeking, “an order directing the 4th and 5th respondents (DSS and the Direc­tor-General of DSS respectively) to produce the respondent in court within 48 hours of the or­der of court to show cause why he should not be released uncon­ditionally”.
On May 9, the court made an order directing the DSS to pro­duce Ubah in court before May 12 to show cause why he should not be released.
Esom stated that the enrolled order was served on the DSS at about 10am on May 10.
She said: “Immediately upon the service of the enrolled order, the DSS surreptitiously filed and obtained on the same day, a mo­tion ex-parte before the court which sought for an order to al­low it detain the respondent for 14 days.”
However, in their counter affidavit in opposition to Ubah’s application, the DSS urged the court to dismiss the motion.
But in a five-paragraph affi­davit deposed to by one Safwan Bello, an officer with the DSS, the security agency stated that all the averments contained Ubah’s affi­davit were not true.
The DSS claimed that Ubah was arrested on reasonable sus­picion of his involvement in a crime, having converted (84 million litres) of Premium Mo­tor Spirit (PMS) belonging to the NNPC kept in the custody of his tank farm, to his personal use.
Ubah’s lawyers, however, af­firm their stand that the transac­tion between Capital Oil and Gas Industries Ltd and the NNPC were a purely commercial trans­action between two corporate en­tities which did not in any way amount to a commission of a crime.
After listening to the sub­missions of counsels to parties in the suit, Justice Haliru fixed Thursday, May 25th, for ruling on whether to order Ubah’s re­lease or otherwise.