For ridiculing Fayemi, Fayose’s aide faces N3bn suit

Aide to Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, Lere Olayinka, has been dragged to court over alleged libel against the state former governor and present Minister of Mines and Steel, Kayode Fayemi.

The minister, in the suit he filed before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, is seeking payment of N3billion to remedy what he described as aggravated damages the insults and public ridicules orchestrated by defendants has allegedly caused him.

Joined in the suit with Olayinka is a member of the Ekiti House of Assembly, Dr. Samuel Omotoso.

The libels, according to Fayemi, was allegedly made by the defendants in statements they made on July 6, 2016 when they appeared on Ekiti State Television, during a state wide broadcast of a live programme christened ‘Ejiire’.

The defendants were alleged to have said during the said programme, also aired on a cable network, Startimes that Fayemi illegally appropriated N1.5billion from Ekiti treasury, which he used in sponsoring the then presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, who later won the 2015 presidential election.

He accused Olayinka of alleging that he, Fayemi, received N5billion from Ecobank in the name of Fountain Holdings for a purported road construction as well as spending state’s funds to build a private university in Ghana for himself.

In the suit, counsel to Fayemi, Rafiu Balogun, is claiming that the defendants had through their alleged statements, depicted the a Minister of Federal Republic of Nigeria as a “very corrupt public office-holder and fraudulent person who siphoned public funds at the detriment of Ekiti citizens while serving as governor.”

The action, he said, has exposed his client to “public ridicule, odium, opprobrium, embarrassment and unprecedented disrepute.”

Read also: Ekiti Assembly threatens to sue EFCC over Fayemi’s alleged N40bn fraud

He further stated that the defendants have done “incalculable and tremendous injury to our client’s image and personality as an international figure”.

Fayemi is as well praying a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from further publishing or making public “statements or utterances similar or further libellous publications or statements or utterances against the plaintiff”.

Court is yet to fix a date for hearing of the case.

Recall that Ekiti State House of Assembly had in a recent letter to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), asked the agency to within 21 days begin investigation into allegations that Fayemi committed a N40billion fraud.

In the letter, which was a reminder of its earlier one on the same subject to the commission, the Assembly members threatened that if the EFCC should “fail, refuse and or neglect to act on this petition within 21 days of receipt of this letter of reminder; we shall have no option than to institute legal action against you.”

By Ebere Ndukwu …

 

 

 

 

RipplesNigeria ….without borders, without fears

Click here to download the Ripples Nigeria App for latest updates

 

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now