A Federal High Court sitting in
Lagos has awarded the cost of one million naira in favour of a Lagos based
lawyer, Olukoya Ogungbeje, and ordered Federal government to apologize to him over the police disruption of the August 5,
2019# RevolutionNow protest.
The court also stated that apology
of the government should be carried out in three national newsapapers.
Ogungbeje said he participated in the #RevolutionNow protest and was among
those tear-gassed by security agents.
The nationwide protest was convened
by the Publisher of SaharaReporters, Omoyele Sowore, who was arrested by the
Department of State Services on August 3.
The court, in a judgment by Justice
Maureen Onyetenu, declared the disruption of the peaceful protest by the
Federal Government, through the police, as “illegal, oppressive, undemocratic
and unconstitutional.”
The judge agreed with the applicant
who sued on behalf of himself and other participants in the protest, that the
Federal Government deprived them of their right to peaceful assembly and
association, in violation of sections 38, 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution.
The judge also condemned “the mass
arrest, harassment, tear-gassing, and clamping into detention” of the
protesters.
Ogungbeje had urged the court to
award N500m as general and exemplary damages against the Federal Government,
DSS and the Attorney General of the Federation, but the court only awarded N1m.
The judge also upheld the defence of
the DSS that it was not involved in the disruption of the protest.
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.
He, however, said on getting to the
take-off point of the protest in Lagos “I met agents and operatives of the
respondents who had barricaded the venue of the peaceful protest for good
governance in Nigeria.
“I was tear-gassed by agents of the
respondents and the peaceful protest was forcefully disrupted by the
respondents.
“I have been denied my fundamental
constitutional rights of peaceful assembly and association by the respondents,
without cause.”
