Hundreds of Ghanaian investors and community members on Wednesday besieged the Nigerian High Commission in Abuja, demanding redress over what they described as “systematic harassment, intimidation, and violation of our fundamental rights” by the Nigeria Police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
“Our businesses are being hounded at every turn,” one of the lead developers of the River Park Estate project in Abuja, Kojo Mensah, said.
The investors claimed that their fundamental rights were being violated, alleging arbitrary arrests, repeated police invitations, and intimidation by both the police and the EFCC.
“We’ve been arrested arbitrarily, summoned without cause, and subjected to endless interrogations, yet the very complaints we cooperated to resolve back in 2012 remain buried in some dusty file,” he said.
Carrying banners that read, “Hands Off Ghanaian Investors!” and “Tinubu, Mahama: Intervene Now!”, the demonstrators called for the immediate removal of Inspector General of Police, Mr Kayode Egbetokun, whom they accused of targeted attacks on Ghanaian businesses operating in Nigeria.
“We demand that President Bola Tinubu and President John Mahama use every diplomatic channel to stop this injustice,” the investors said.
The protest follows the filing of a suit at the Federal High Court in Abuja, in which Jonah Capital and its co-plaintiffs named IGP Egbetokun, the Nigeria Police, and the EFCC as defendants.
They are seeking a perpetual injunction restraining both agencies “from any further interference in the River Park Estate matter,” immediate disclosure of the long-delayed Special Investigation Panel report, and the sum of N200m in damages for alleged breaches of their constitutional rights.
The suit, according to the plaintiffs, is not only to seek redress but also to safeguard the integrity of foreign investments in Nigeria and discourage what they describe as state-sponsored intimidation of legitimate investors.
In their amended writ, the plaintiffs alleged that although the SIP concluded its probe and reported to the IG, those findings had never been furnished to the investors despite repeated formal requests.
“Instead,” the suit contends, “a senior officer in the IG’s Monitoring Unit has unilaterally reopened the investigation, purportedly to undermine the SIP’s clear exoneration of our companies.”
PUNCH.
