Court orders DSS to produce Ifeanyi Ubah on Friday

The Federal High Court, Lagos, has ordered the De­partment of State Services (DSS) to produce the Chairman of Capital Oil and Gas Industries Limited, Dr. Patrick Ifeanyi Ubah, on Friday – and show cause why he should not be released un­conditionally.

The trial judge, Justice Muhammed Idris, gave the ruling on Tuesday in favour of the ex-parte application filed by Ubah’s counsel, Mrs. Ifeoma Esom, to compel the DSS to release Ubah from its custody where he has been detained since Saturday, May 6, 2017.

In an affidavit deposed to by George Oranuba, the Company Secretary and Le­gal Adviser of Capital Oil and Gas Industries Limit­ed, Esom declared that the DSS acted in disregard of “the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers and the sanctity of the judicial process.”

The court document not­ed that Ubah’s arrest was in respect of the allegations made by the Nigerian Na­tional Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC) and the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which are already encumbered by a lawsuit.

“Notwithstanding the pendency of this suit and the service of the originating process as aforesaid, the third respondent – the Economic and Financial Crimes Com­mission (EFCC) and the Di­rector-General (DG) of the DSS – the fourth respond­ent, again invited the first ap­plicant to report to their of­fices in respect of the same allegations made by the 7th respondent (NNPC) and the 9th respondent (AMCON) which is the subject-matter of the instant suit,” the doc­ument stated.

Mrs. Esom argued that unless the court ordered the applicant to be produced in court within 48 hours, the EFCC and DSS would con­tinue to keep him in their custody where they may “coerce him into acceding to whatever conditions they im­pose on him in exchange for his freedom.”

The court document also acknowledged that Ubah was detained from March 24 to April 14, 2017 by the DSS.

The DSS had last Satur­day claimed that Ubah was arrested over “economic sab­otage” and diversion of pe­troleum products worth N11 billion.

It said that the petro­leum products, belonging to NNPC Retail, stored in the Capital Oil tank farm in Lagos under a through­put agreement, went miss­ing under controversial cir­cumstances.

However, the company secretary asserted that the Throughput Agreement al­lowed “conversion and di­version of products by oper­ators” so long as the operator is prepared to “re-deliver the products within seven days of demand by the product owner or to pay a penalty for non-re-delivery.”

He said that failure to re-deliver is a mere breach of contract, remediable by the payment of penalty to the owner, adding that there can be no issue of crime in con­version or diversion of prod­uct, and does not call for the intervention of any law en­forcement agency.

“The Throughput Agree­ment expressly states that any penalty due for non-re-delivery is to be treated as a debt and I verily believe that law enforcement agencies are not allowed to operate as debt collectors,” Oranuba de­posed.

He said that the NNPC is indebted to Capital Oil and Gas Industries Limited in “excess of N13 billion”, yet the company did not call law en­forcement agencies to collect the debt, despite the length of time the NNPC has held on to the money.

The management of Cap­ital Oil and Gas Industries Limited had on Monday ac­cused the DSS of trying to criminalise a commercial dispute between it and the NNPC – with the arrest and detention of Ubah.

The company highlight­ed the various transactions it had with the NNPC for which the corporation was yet to pay it N16 billion.

It also brought to the fore Dr. Ubah’s ordeal in the hands of the DSS and the fail­ure of the agency to honour the truce terms it entered with him.

In a statement issued on Monday, the company de­scribed Ubah’s detention as unlawful and a breach of his fundamental human rights.

Capital Oil gave a break­down of NNPC’s indebted­ness to it as follows:

*$5,540,000 (N2.2 bil­lion) – unpaid berthing fees for NNPC vessels that called at our jetty;

*$2,952,555 (N1 billion) – invoice for chartered ves­sels to carry out STS opera­tions Lagos offshore to ferry products (PMS) to storage at the request of NNPC since 2015;

*N1.170 billion – amount owed to Capital Oil & Gas In­dustries Limited for through­put services from March to October 2016;

*N3.146 billion – pay­ment made to NNPC for 26,820 million litres of PMS vide pro-forma invoice No. 53598 which is yet to be de­livered to us;

*N2.0 billion – payment to NNPC in April to facili­tate the release of the Man­aging Director and engender reconciliation which NNPC reneged on; and

*N6.266 billion – N0.80k and N0.40 Jetty Throughput charge on over seven billion litres dispensed for NNPC by Capital Oil.