Justice Hyeladzira Nganjiwa of a Federal High Court in Anambra on Friday awarded N102 million compensatory damages in favour of Ifeanyi Ejiofor the lawyer to the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, for gross violation of his fundamental rights and cost of litigation.
The court also awarded him N5 million being the cost of his Toyota Camry car which was burnt by security agencies.
The IPOB lawyer had in a fundamental rights enforcement suit with No: FHC/AWK/CS/56/2021, dragged the government to court to challenge the invasion of his ancestral home in Oraifite, in the state on June 6, 2021, by security personnel during which his aide was killed.
The Nigeria Police Force; the Inspector General of Police; the State Security Service; the Director-General, State Security Service; the Nigerian Security And Civil Defence Corps; the Nigerian Army; the Chief of Army Staff and Chukwuka Ofoegbu (a.k.a. Ijele Speaks) were joined as first– eighth defendants in the suit.
Delivering judgment, Justice Nganjiwa declared the brutal invasion by the agents of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th respondents as oppressive, and gross violation of the rights to life, dignity of human person, fair hearing, right to private and family life of the plaintiff.
He also declared as illegal, oppressive and unlawful, the taking away and subsequent burning of Ejiofor’s Toyota Car with registration number: YAB 60 CB together with the dead body of his domestic staff, Samuel Okoro, and other vital documents and valuables seized from his house by government agents.
