Odili’s Libel Suit: Court Adjourns To 27 June For Motion On Stay Of Interlocutory Injunction
A Port-Harcourt High Court presided over by Justice Augusta Chukwu has adjourned to June 27 to hear a motion for stay of interlocutory injunction filed by counsel to two co-authors of a book under litigation, Barrister Idaye Opi.
The two co-authors, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu and Ms Ayisha Osori, allege in their book that the complainant in the case, Dr. Peter Odili, co-funded a campaign for third term by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Dr. Odili’s counsel, Kanu Agabi (SAN) had made an application for an interlocutory injunction concerning the book and in her ruling on the application, Justice Augusta Chukwu, had restrained the co-authors of the book from further publication of the book under litigation which allegedly defames the character of Dr. Peter Odili, a former governor of Rivers State.
But counsel to the two co-authors, Barrister Idaye Opi, had filed a motion for stay of the interlocutory injunction by the court.
The court had earlier adjourned to June 17 to hear the defence counsel’s motion for stay of the interlocutory injunction but when the matter came up in court on June 17, the defence counsel was absent but sent in a letter to ask for a postponement which the presideing judge granted and adjourned the case to June 27 for hearing of defence counsel’s motion for stay of interlocutory injunction.
Dr. Peter Odili and his legal team were present in court on June 17 for hearing of the motion.
Dr. Odili filed a lawsuit against Prof. Chidi Odinkalu and Ms Ayisha Osori for alleging in their book that he was one of those who funded a campaign for third term by former President Obasanjo. Former President Obasanjo was Nigeria’s president from May 29, 1999 to May 29, 2007.
Dr. Odili said the co-authors of the book brought him into public ridicule and put him in a bad light in the way they portrayed him in their book, “Too Good To Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man In Africa”.
The former Rivers State governor said that the book puts him in a bad light before reasonable people across the world who have read it including respectable scholars in the United States of America.
Dr. Odili said in the suit that the co-authors of the book should make a public apology and pay N1billion in damages.
Prof. Chidi Odinkalu and Ms Ayisha Osori alleged in their book that former President Obasanjo wanted a third team and tried to amend the Constitution to achieve his ambition.
They further alleged that Dr. Odili who was governor of Rivers State at the time worked alongside his then Bauchi State counterpart, Adamu Muazu, to provide funds for Obasanjo’s alleged third-term bid.
They said: “With all lines of activity terminating at the president’s table, a paper trail was not available. The corporate trail, however, disclosed a deep financial bond between the president, Senator Ararume and the governments of Bauchi and Rivers States, then ruled, respectively, by two of President Obasanjo’s closest governorship acolytes, Adamu Muazu and Peter Odili, who were at the centre of the shadowy, complex, unlawful and, almost certainly, criminal financial operations behind third term”.
They further said that “when all the cost elements, including the public relations campaigns, additional incentives, the work of the JCCR (Joint Committee On Constitutional Review) and constitutional conference, as well as inevitable incentives to the security services, are added to the inducements proposed for legislators, it seems almost certain that the budget for the third term was easily in excess of $500million or half a billion dollars. None of this money was lawfully appropriated. They could only have been generated by theft, diversion or misappropriation of public resources”.
The court will hear defendants’ counsel’s application for stay of interlocutory injunction on Thursday, June 27, 2019.
