Court orders DSS DG to immediately grant Emefiele access to lawyers, family members

“The lawyers of the applicant shall have access to the applicant immediately. And regularly, at a reasonable time, pending the determination of the application. He consequently adjourned the hearing to June 20,” the judge said.

Emefiele was arrested shortly after new President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government suspended him following nearly a decade in the post.

Tinubu, who came to power at the end of last month following a highly contested February presidential election, had promised reforms to help Africa’s largest economy emerge from financial troubles.

“The Department of State Services (DSS) hereby confirms that Mr Godwin Emefiele, the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is now in its custody for some investigative reasons,” the DSS internal security agency said in a statement.

The DSS did not give any further details, but one of Tinubu’s government spokesmen earlier said that Emefiele had been suspended immediately as part of an “ongoing investigation of his office and the planned reforms in the financial sector”.

One of the bank’s deputy governors has stepped into the director’s role pending the conclusion of investigations.