After regularly heaping insults on President Jonathan, el Rufai drags PDP to court for defamation #He is claiming N1.5b as damages The favourite pastime of APC Deputy National Secretary, Nasir el Rufai on Twitter and Facebook has been to heap all manner of unprintable insults on President Jonathan and top members of his party. This he does daily including insulting the First Lady. However, el Rufai yesterday ran to the court demanding N1.5bn as alleged damages he suffered following allegation that he has links with the Boko Haram sect. He dragged the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Olisa Metuh to court. In the libel suit he filed before an Abuja high court sitting at Gudu, El- Rufai, insisted that the defendants should be compelled to pay him the sum of N1.5billion for tarnishing his public image via a press statement that alleged that both himself and the All Progressive Congress, APC, are connected to the Boko Haram insurgents. He told the court that Metuh, in another publication that was sponsored by the PDP, alleged that he (El-Rufai) collected N5bn as consultancy fee from the suspended governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Metuh was said to have made the claims in the March 17 and 23 editions of This Day Newspaper. In the suit dated April 2, 2014, El-Rufai, equally joined the newspaper as the third defendant in the matter. The former minister insisted that the publications greatly damaged his reputation and occassioned an irreparable damage to his hard-earned public image by portraying him as a corrupt, money laundering, reckless, lawless, greedy and unscrupulous public figure. He maintained that the publications were “in furtherance of the defendants’ campaign of calumny” against him. Meantime, Justice Abubakar Talba has adjourned the case to June 5 for mention, even as he ordered service of the court processes on all the defendants. Specifically, the plaintiff is seeking an order awarding N1bn as general damages against Metuh and PDP. He is further asking for another order awarding additional N500m as general damages jointly and severally against all the three defendants.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 06:32:05 +0000
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