The embattled Yoruba nation campaigner, Sunday Igboho has filed a suit against the Department of |State Securit Service, SSS, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami over the July 2 raid of his Ibadan residence.
Mr Igboho filed a suit at the Oyo State High Court, seeking N500 billion damages, The Nation reported.
He is praying the court for an order for the enforcement of his fundamental human right.
The suit was filed on a day one of his counsel dismissed as untrue speculations that a Beninese passport was found on the activist.
In the suit, Igboho, through his lawyer Chief Yomi Aliu (SAN), is seeking orders declaring the invasion as a violation of his fundamental human right, and destruction of his property as a violation of his fundamental right to peacefully own property and wealth.
The sum was described as “exemplary and/or aggravated damages for breaching the applicant’s fundamental rights in the course of illegal and/or malicious invasion of his residence situate, lying and being at Igboho Villa. No.1, Dalag Street, Off Soka Bus Stop, Soka Area, Off Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Ibadan.”
Mr Igboho is also asking the court for a declaration that it was “oppressive, malicious, arbitrary and grossly unconstitutional for the 2nd & 3rd respondents to invade” his residence lying and being at Igboho Villa, 1, Dalag Street, Off Soka Bus Stop, Soka Area, Off Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Ibadan “without announcing who they were and ask the applicant to open his gate but rather shot their way through killing two people including an elderly Imam doing Tahjud (night vigil), shooting at cars thereby destroying them and not sparing animals like cats and dogs in total violation of the intendments of the Fundamental Human Rights’ provision in CFRN, 1999 and African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (Ratification and Enforcement), Act, LFN 2010 protecting the-dignity of human person, sanctity of human life and privacy of citizens and their homes.”
The plaintiff urged the court to declare that the respondents’ resolve in preventing him from “propagating his belief in association with other like minds in creating a Yoruba Nation and/or Oduduwa Republic for his Indigenous Yoruba People and hunting him with gun with a view to arresting him dead or alive when he has not called for war in achieving same is against his fundamental rights to freedom of thought, conscience and association since campaign for self-determination is recognised by Nigerian Law and international treaties of organisations to which Nigeria belongs.”
He prayed the court for an injunction restraining the respondents from arresting, harassing or disturbing him in any way that can violate his fundamental human rights.
Mr Igboho had, soon after the raid, demanded an apology from the DSS and payment of N500 million as damages for destroying his Ibadan residence during the midnight raid.
His lawyer had, in a statement entitled ‘Illegal and Grossly Unconstitutional Invasion’ declared that his client has “always preached peace and warned his followers never to have recourse to violence, saying that ‘it is God and alale (ancestors) that will fight for Yoruba Nation.”
He said: “There is nowhere in the civilised world that a citizen who had no prior invitation by security agent or had resisted arrest will be so invaded with his rights to dignity of human persons, ownership of property and sanctity of life trampled upon during the invasion.
“No demand to enter was made but rather they shot their way into the house allegedly killing seven people, though a DSS spokesman admitted killing two people.”
