A Federal High Court 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 ordered over the police disruption of the August 5, 2019 #RevolutionNow protest, Citizen Gavel reports.
The 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 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.”
Apart from the N1m award, the court also ordered the Federal Government to tender a public apology to the applicant in three national daily newspapers.
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