BIAFRA: Court to hear IPOB’s N8.5bn suit against FG June 2

Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja has slated June 21 to commence hearing on N8.5billion suit the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, filed against the Federal Government of Nigeria. 

IPOB is seeking damages and compensation for their deceased and injured members who it said were “wickedly and brutally killed by combined forces of the Nigerian Army, the Department of State Security Service and the Nigerian Police”. 

The plaintiff, through its lawyer Mr. Okere Kingdom, told the court that about 153 of its members were killed during a peaceful protest in Onitsha, Aba and other parts of the South East and South South of Nigeria late last year and early 2016. 

It said that over 50 of them sustained various degrees of injuries while staging a peaceful protest for the release of their detained leader, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu. 

Specifically, IPOB is among other things, seeking “a declaration of the court condemning as crime against humanity, the unlawful, cruel, inhuman, brutal and wicked Killing (shooting) of unarmed, non-violent and peaceful protesters who are exercising their right to peaceful assembly, freedom of association and right to self-determination as guaranteed in section 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria and Articles I, VI, XIX and XX of the African Charter on Human & Peoples Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, by the combined team of the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Police Force and other security agencies”. 

Whereas it prayed the court to award N50m to each of those who were injured during the protest, the plaintiff sought N100m as compensatory damages to each family of those that died.