A former Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen.
Azubuike Ihejirika, has instituted a N100bn libel suit against a
self-styled Australian hostage negotiator, Stephen Davies, for accusing
him (Ihejirika) of sponsoring the Boko Haram insurgent group.
Ihejirika filed the suit before a Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja. He is, through his team of lawyers,
comprising Chief Nnoruka Udechukwu (SAN), Prof. C.U. Ilegbune (SAN), and
Ben Anechebe (SAN), seeking N100bn as aggravated damages for
defamation. The plaintiff’s lawyers said their
client “has suffered grievous wrong and he has been exposed to scandal,
odium, ridicule, humiliation and his character, credit and reputation
brought into disrepute, both in Nigeria and abroad.”
He had obtained an order of the court to serve the process on the defendant abroad. His lawyers had also, on the strength of
the court order, applied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to enable
them to serve Davis who lives in Perth, Australia. Australia and Nigeria are members of the
Commonwealth and a special procedure applies when serving court
processes on a defendant.
Ihejirika is also seeking an order of
perpetual injunction restraining Davis or his agents from further making
defamatory comments about him. He also seeks an order compelling the
defendant to publish “a full and unqualified retraction and apology
conspicuously in the front page of a newspaper to assuage the plaintiff
for the said false, malicious and libelous publication.”
Ihejirika said that he retired
meritoriously from the military after a successful career and that he
served the army without blemish. He stated, “On or about the 28th day of August 2014, the defendant granted a multimedia and television interview broadcast to AriseTv,
which aired in Nigeria, particularly in Abuja, and subsequently
published by numerous newspapers and media houses; wherein the defendant
when asked during the AriseNews segment of the interview to
name the sponsors of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, falsely and
maliciously spoke of the plaintiff in the following words, to wit:
’’There is the former Chief of Army Staff, retired January, or actually
sacked by the President; he is another sponsor. I could give you the
names if you like but I have no fear that these were very confident and
it is in fact Boko Haram senior commanders who have been naming them. He said that the spoken words and
publication in their ordinary meaning were understood by reasonable
members of the society who listened or watched the said AriseNews
broadcast in Abuja, to mean that he sponsored Boko Haram, a terrorist
sect, to wage war, insurrection or insurgency against Nigeria.
He also said that the publication
implied that he did not retire but was sacked by the President and that
he had committed treason or treasonable felony. Ihejirika said the public who listened
to the broadcast believed that he had conducted himself in a manner
tantamount to breaching his oath of allegiance and service as a soldier
and senior officer in the Nigerian Army.
In an affidavit he deposed to, Ihejirika
said he had suffered grievous wrong and had been exposed to scandal,
odium, ridicule, humiliation and that his character, credit and
reputation were brought into disrepute, both in Nigeria and abroad.
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