Metro

Federal High Court In Umuahia Awards Abia State Journalist N3.5m For Damages

Published

3 years ago

Mar 17, 2022.

A Federal High Court sitting in Umuahia handed down a judgement in favour of an Abia State journalist, Norah Okafor, and awarded her N3.5 million in damages for the Economic and Financial Crime Commission operatives’ invasion of her residence in the early hours of September 23, 2021.
She expressed her conviction that the judiciary had also demonstrated that they were the common man’s last hope.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that a Federal High Court sitting in Umuahia handed down a judgement in favour of an Abia State journalist, Norah Okafor, and awarded her N3.5 million in damages for the Economic and Financial Crime Commission operatives’ invasion of her residence in the early hours of September 23, 2021.

The EFCC was also ordered to apologise publicly to Okafor, which will be published in two national dailies.

According to our source, Okafor was pleased with the decision, saying, “It is justice not only for me, but for Nigeria journalists who stood by and testified for me.”

She expressed her conviction that the judiciary had also demonstrated that they were the common man’s last hope.

“At one point in time, I felt demoralised when the EFCC spokesperson kept saying that they didn’t do that and that I was just trying to trend for no reason,” she explained, “but then I tried to make him understand that their guys did this and at the end of the day, they said that it was a case of mistaken identity.”

“All I had expected was for them to, maybe, apologise and say, ‘let the sleeping dog lie’”.

Explaining further, she said, “I didn’t go to court because I had money to do something extraordinary, but I wanted to prove a point that I have a right.

“It was all about the invasion of privacy. They invaded my house at the wee hours of the night and met me naked. The trauma alone wasn’t funny.

“When they came, I thought they were criminals, armed robbers and I was shocked and at the end of the day, they were just EFCC officials who came to ransack my house. For what reason and why don’t they investigate? They would have at least done their investigation properly before embarking on their mid-night raid”.

The reporter who worked with Modern Communication Limited Radio Government House Umuahia said the raid didn’t make sense, lamenting, “Even if I am not a journalist, but a normal Nigerian, wherever the person is, many of them have been stomaching this and they (EFCC) would go Scot free.

“I am happy that I have gotten justice at last. For me, it is not about the money, it is about the fact that I got justice and this justice, I hope, will trickle down to others who may also have faced similar treatment and who may have been waiting for such judgement and which is taking time to come.

During the raid on 23rd September, 2021, the EFCC had also destroyed a lot of her personal property.

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