Fayose
According to Sun News, the Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has
filed a N20 billion lawsuit against the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) for placing him on a watchlist.
The Commission is alleged to have written an advisory to key
security agencies demanding that Fayose be arrested if he attempts to
flee the country through land, sea and air borders to escape justice.
Following the action, Fayose threatened to sue the EFCC if it fails to withdraw the advisory within 72 hours, saying the action “not only breached his constitutional immunity, it also exposed him to public opium and ridicule.”
He further demanded a written apology to be published in three national newspapers and social media.
In the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1087/2018, Fayose is seeking, among
other things, an order of the Court mandating the EFCC pay the sum of
N20 billion as general damages for what he called “flagrant,
deliberate, premeditated and reckless libel and unprovoked attack on his
character and reputation and the breach of his constitutional
right/immunity as an incumbent Governor.”
The governor is also seeking a declaration that the statements
contained in the EFCC letter dated September 12, 2018 – and addressed to
all Security Agencies in Nigeria, portraying him as a criminal, a
fugitive and a runaway from the law – are not true, are malicious, are
not fair statements.
Fayose wants the court to further declare “that the EFCC letter
placing him on watchlist and directing his arrest on sight, even while a
sitting Governor, is unconstitutional as same offends the clear
provision of Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria (as amended) which clothes the him with immunity
against arrest and prosecution as an incumbent Governor.
“That the tweet by the Defendant (EFCC) through its official
Twitter handle, which was widely circulated through social media and
published on Punch Newspaper (online) of 16th July, 2018, with the
particulars wordings pleaded in the Statement of Claim filed along with
this Writ is not true, is malicious, is not a fair statement and
presents the Plaintiff as a fraudster thereby ridiculing him and
reducing him in the eyes of reasonable and right-thinking members of the
society.”