By Simon Ebegbulem  Benin City
FORMER Governor of Delta State, Chief James Onanefe Ibori says he will head to the Supreme Court over the ruling of Appeal Court on Thursday which declared that he had a case to answer over an alleged missing N140 million during his tenure.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, had in a case it filed in 2007, accused the former governor of allegedly embezzling the said missing fund. The lower court had struck off the case against Ibori but the Appeal Court on Thursday, dismissed the ruling.

But reacting to the decision in a press statement signed by his Media Assistant, Tony Eluemunor, Ibori said that despite his travails, he had remained an unfailing believer in the rule of law, especially the courts.

Chief James Ibori

According to him, “the decision of the Federal High Court in Asaba, which the Court of Appeal sitting in Benin has just reversed, was perhaps the most politicized in Nigerian history, with crass politicians not hiding their interests and sundry opinions on otherwise purely matters of law – yet refusing to refer to the judgement while pouring out their sectarian creeds.

“Yet, Ibori, a believer in the rule of law and freedom of the courts, will not stoop as low as those who frown at judges whose decisions they do not like, openly or through innuendos, impute any misdeeds on the part of the panel of Justices who decided the case. In pursuit of this undying belief, he has instructed his lawyers to, without delay, take the next legal step by referring the matter to the apex court in the land”.

The former governor also called on his supporters to remain calm as they “have always done since his political persecution began.”