The Federal Government of Nigeria has pleaded with an Abuja High Court to allow it present a final address despite its failure to pay court-ordered costs to the Plaintiff Emmanuel Ogebe. The international human rights lawyer had sued the Buhari administration for defamation over his sponsorship of ten Chibok girls to school in America.

At the proceedings yesterday in the capital, the Defendants were represented by the Ministry of Justice were unable to proceed with their motion because they had failed to file ancillary processes thereto.

However counsel for the Plaintiff, Godwin Abarike, Esq had previously opposed the application of the FGN on the basis that they had failed to pay costs awarded to Ogebe by the court and shouldn’t be allowed to proceed.

Costs have been awarded against the Federal Government five times since the commencement of this defamation action in 2017. However the FGN has failed to pay previous awards totaling over N1,177,000 (one million, one hundred and seventy thousand.)

The FGN never presented any witnesses or evidence in its defense whereas the Plaintiff Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq flew to Nigeria and testified in his own behalf on multiple occasions but wanted to file a final address at the last minute.

In a response to the objections of Ogebe’s counsel, the FGN filed a further affidavit last week claiming that they paid N177,000 of the costs to Ogebe’s counsel but are challenging the balance of N1million so they are not in disobedience to the court.

Reacting the Plaintiff Ogebe said: “The AGF did not present a defense but tried to dismiss the case claiming it had two different suit numbers. The Abuja court dismissed both the AGF’s motions to strike out on the grounds that the two numbers were erroneously issued by the court registry and the sins of the registry should not be visited on the plaintiff for no fault of mine. Now they are delaying the case further that they want to address after not even defending the case and only employing technicalities.”

It was not just me a pioneer practitioner in Abuja over 30 years ago but even the new judge could not understand why a simple defamation case dragged for six years. It is one of the least complicated cases to handle. You tender the defamatory publication and the other party produces evidence to prove it was true. In my case, the FGN didn’t even present any evidence. In fact their exhibit proved my case that it was malicious because of my criticism of Buhari!

The prior judge Justice AB Mohammed’s claim that my case file’s first disappearance in 2017 was because it mistakenly went to the court of appeal was not credible or plausible but I was willing to give his lordship the benefit of doubt.

He also ruled against the FGN’s preliminary objection and even awarded costs against them.

His strange ruling however was to allow the FGN to file its statement of defense after I had testified, been cross examined and closed my case as plaintiff. We felt it was clearly prejudicial for them to hear the totality of my case before writing and filing their defense. However we did not appeal against it. Still the FGN even failed to bring witnesses to prove their case.

However my file’s second disappearance in 2020 from Aisha Alhassan’s interference until Justice AB Mohammed’s elevation to the Court of Appeal (where he recently sat on the PEPC), compounded the delay. FGN should pay the balance or forfeit their motion.

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