SERAP sues FG, NCDC over COVID-19 funds

To ensure accountability in the expenditure of the COVID-19 funds, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has sued Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire and Director General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu.

The Lagos-based rights group in the suit filed at an Abuja Federal High Court during the weekend, sought “an order for leave to apply for judicial review and an order of mandamus to direct and compel Ehanire and the NCDC to publish details of the funds received from federal, state governments, private sector and details of how the funds have been spent.”

Marked FHC/ABJ/CS/616/2020, the suit followed SERAP’s Freedom of Information (FoI) request dated March 27, 2020 to the Minister of Health and the NCDC, in which it expressed concern that lack of transparency in the use of the resources to contain COVID-19 would lead to mismanagement of the money, loss of lives and damage the country’s public health system.

In the suit filed by its lawyers, Kolawole Oluwadare, Atinuke Adejuyigbe and Opeyemi Owolabi, SERAP “is seeking to access to details of the funds received and how they were deployed under the FoI Act 2011 and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to which Nigeria is a state party.”