Nigerian government has been ordered to pay N1mllion damages to a Lagos based lawyer Olukoya Ogungbeje, for using the police to disrupt August 5, 2019 #RevolutionNow protest.
The lawyer had sued the Federal Government for N500m, for using security operatives to tear-gas him and other protesters.
In the affidavit, which he filed in support of the suit, Ogungbeje said when he was co-opted into the #RevolutionNow protest, as a lawyer, he checked the constitution and found that it was lawful.
“I was tear-gassed by agents of the respondents and the peaceful protest was forcefully disrupted by the respondents.
Justice Maureen Onyetenu of the Federal High Court in Lagos who awarded the sum of N1mllion in favour of the lawyer, agreed with his argument that disruption of the peaceful protest by the Federal Government of Nigeria through the police was “illegal, oppressive, undemocratic and unconstitutional.”
The judge who condemned “the mass arrest, harassment, tear-gassing, and clamping into detention” of the protesters, also directed the Nigerian government to tender a public apology to the applicant in three national daily newspapers.
The DSS’ argument of not being involved in the disruption of the protest was however upheld by Justice Onyetenu.