A Federal High Court forfeiture order that swept up ₦941,994,079.86 is now under challenge after roughly 70 account holders asked the court to set aside the July 13, 2026 judgment, saying the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission mixed their bank details with those tied to an IPPIS payroll investigation.
The applicants filed a motion on July 16, 2026 through counsel Abbas Ochogwu. Named among them are Oche Samuel, Kate Nkechinyere and Itodo Caroline, together with 67 others. Their filing says the applicants were never joined as parties to the ICPC suit, yet their accounts were listed against names of unknown persons who were made respondents.
Ochogwu asked the court to lift restrictions on the affected accounts, which he says have been frozen since November 2024 without any court order. He argued the account holders were denied an opportunity to be heard before orders touching their property were made, and that the court lacked jurisdiction to decide issues affecting people who were not parties to the case. The motion frames the conduct as a breach of the applicants’ constitutional right to fair hearing.
The ICPC answered in a process dated July 31, 2026, sworn by David Nelson. Nelson said the commission’s probe showed names tied to IPPIS payroll identities did not match the persons controlling some recipient accounts. He told the court the applicants could have produced bank statements, employment records and payroll documents but did not appear before the final forfeiture order. The commission rejected claims that failing to produce statements proved the funds’ legitimacy or that the forfeiture was wrongly obtained, and urged the court to treat the motion as an attempt to reopen a concluded proceeding.
Justice Binta Nyako issued the final forfeiture order covering ₦941,994,079.86 after the ICPC presented IPPIS numbers, names of purported workers and banking details it says link the funds to suspected ghost workers. With the applicants’ motion and the commission’s response, the dispute is joined and awaiting the court’s determination; no date has yet been fixed for that hearing.
The litigation sits against a longer government push to cleanse the payroll. The IPPIS was introduced in 2007 to tighten personnel records, and in 2023 the federal government moved to delist unverified civil servants. The ICPC says its probe identified suspected ghost workers across several ministries and agencies.
The courts have recently revisited freezing orders where material facts were said to be suppressed. In August 2026, the Federal High Court, per Justice Emeka Nwite, lifted post-no-debit orders on accounts linked to an alleged ₦21 billion system glitch in 2023 and criticised the police for withholding material information in an ex parte application. The outcome of the current motion will determine whether the ₦941,994,079.86 forfeiture stands or is set aside for fresh adjudication.
