A Port-Harcourt High Court has adjourned sitting to 18 September for pretrial conference in a suit brought by a former governor of Rivers State, Sir (Dr.) Peter Odili, in which he said his reputation was allegedly damaged by two co-authors of a book.
Presiding judge, Justice Augusta Chukwu, announced the adjournment at the end of sitting on 17 July.
A pretrial conference is to resolve issues in a case before a full court trial.
Dr. Odili filed a libel suit against Co-authors Prof. Chidi Odinkalu and Ms Ayisha Osori for alleging in their book that he co-funded a campaign for third term by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The former governor said in the suit that the co-authors brought him into public ridicule and portrayed him in a bad light before reasonable people across the world and asked that they pay N1billion in damages and also make a public apology.
Prof. Odinkalu and Ms Osori alleged former governor Odili and his then Bauchi State counterpart, Adamu Muazu, were at centre of a campaign to fund alleged third term by former President Obasanjo.
In the book “Too Good To Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man In Africa,” the co-authors alleged former President Obasanjo had ambition to run for third term, which was not constitutional.
The co-authors said: “With all lines of activity terminating at the president’s table, a paper trail was not possible. 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 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 $500 million 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”.
Justice Chukwu restrained co-authors of the book in an earlier sitting from further publication of copies of the book until full determination of the case.
However counsel to the defendants, Barrister Idaye Opi, brought a motion for stay of the interlocutory order by the court and lost the motion when the presiding judge ruled against it at a sitting on 27 June.
The court’s decision to restrain the co-authors from further publication of copies of the book came on an application for interlocutory injunction by Odili’s counsel, Kanu Agabi (SAN).
The court adjourned to 18 September for pretrial conference at the end of sitting on 17 July.
