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A Federal High Court in Abuja has dismissed a bid to halt the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission from investigating an alleged N350 million contract fraud, affirming the agency’s statutory authority to probe corruption petitions even where suspects claim prior clearance by other security agencies.
Justice James Kolawole Omotosho of the Federal High Court delivered the ruling, rejecting arguments by plaintiff Paul Afagase Johnson that the ICPC’s investigation amounted to intimidation and a violation of his fundamental human rights. The judge held that courts were generally reluctant to restrain law enforcement agencies from investigating criminal allegations, particularly where government ministries, departments and agencies were potentially involved. “The court cannot serve as a shield for individuals seeking to evade lawful investigation,” Justice Omotosho said.
Johnson had filed the suit asking the court to restrain the ICPC from inviting or investigating him over a dispute he described as purely civil and contractual involving himself, Chief Richard Okozi, and Rokozi Investment Limited. He argued the matter was commercial in nature, not criminal, and that both the Nigeria Police Force and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had previously invited and cleared him in connection with the same transaction. The court rejected that argument entirely, ruling that the materials before it showed only that Johnson had been invited by those agencies, not that either had concluded investigations in his favour.
Justice Omotosho ruled that the ICPC was acting within the full scope of its statutory powers in issuing its invitation to the plaintiff and that no basis existed for preventing the commission from continuing its inquiry. He advised Johnson to honour the ICPC’s invitation so the commission could properly investigate the allegations. The case arose from a petition alleging that N350 million was paid to secure a contract for the benefit of certain public institutions. When the contract allegedly failed to materialise, the contractor reportedly petitioned the Department of State Services, which reviewed the matter and referred it to the ICPC for investigation.
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The ruling is consistent with a pattern of judicial outcomes the ICPC has recorded in recent months as defendants attempt to use pre-emptive civil suits to block its investigations. In February 2026, a Federal High Court in Umuahia, Abia State, dismissed suits filed by two former members of the Abia State House of Representatives who had challenged the constitutional basis of the ICPC Act itself, with the court finding that their actions amounted to an attempt to use judicial proceedings as a shield against lawful investigation and awarding costs of N500,000 against each plaintiff. In that ruling, the court held that the ICPC possessed clear statutory powers to investigate offences bordering on corruption and related matters, and that Section 28 of the ICPC Act was not inconsistent with the constitutional provisions cited by the plaintiffs.
The ICPC was established by the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000, signed into law by former President Olusegun Obasanjo as part of Nigeria’s post-military transition reform agenda. The commission is mandated to prohibit and prescribe punishments for corrupt practices, to investigate reports of corruption, to examine the practices and procedures of public bodies to identify corruption-prone processes, and to educate and enlist public support in fighting corruption. It operates independently from the EFCC, which focuses primarily on financial crimes and economic offences, with the two agencies frequently overlapping on large-scale public sector fraud investigations — a jurisdictional grey area that defendants have sometimes exploited by obtaining clearance or non-prosecution decisions from one agency and presenting it as a bar to investigation by the other.
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Justice Omotosho’s ruling addressed that tactic directly, drawing a clear distinction between being invited by an agency and being cleared by it. The court’s finding that Johnson had failed to produce evidence of any concluded investigation in his favour by either the police or the EFCC left no legal basis for restraining the ICPC from independently pursuing the petition before it.
The judge noted that the ICPC’s enabling legislation specifically empowers it to investigate petitions where public institutions may be implicated — a category that the N350 million contract allegation squarely met, given that the petition originated from a procurement dispute involving public bodies.
The dismissal clears the way for the ICPC to proceed to formal investigation, including summoning Johnson for questioning, examining financial records, and interviewing other parties named in the petition. If the commission’s investigation produces sufficient evidence, it may proceed to prosecution before the Federal High Court. The ICPC’s prosecution arm has a notably higher conviction rate than its investigation-to-charge ratio suggests — the agency has recorded over 3,800 convictions since its establishment, according to its annual reports, with contract fraud and procurement manipulation among the most frequently prosecuted categories.
Johnson has the option of appealing the Federal High Court’s dismissal to the Court of Appeal in Abuja, a route that defendants in similar cases have used to delay investigations for months or years by obtaining interim injunctions pending the hearing of the appeal.
No indication of Johnson’s intentions regarding a possible appeal was available at the time of the ruling. The ICPC did not immediately release a public statement following the judgment, consistent with its standard practice of commenting on investigation outcomes rather than judicial proceedings at the preliminary stages of inquiry.
