When on 24 November, 2011, Justice Yetunde Idowu of an Ikeja High
Court in Lagos ordered the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency , NDLEA,
to pay popular actor and movie producer Babatunde Omidina, N25
million, as compensation for his wrongful detention over allegation of
possessing cocaine, many believed that it was justice
well-deserved.
He was arrested by officials of NDLEA at the Murtala Mohammed
International Airport, Lagos while travelling to Paris, France to attend
a naming ceremony of an Air France staff. Baba Suwe, as Babatunde
Omidina is popularly known, was made to undergo harrowing experience of
excreting a non-existent hard drug purportedly hidden in his stomach.
For 21 days, officials of NDLEA insisted that the comic actor had
stacks of banned substance in his stomach. Their conviction was that
several scan carried out on him showed he had some banned substance
concealed in his stomach. The entire country waited anxiously for him
to excrete the substance. Day after day, Baba Suwe was taken from one
hospital to the other in an effort to get the presumed substance out.
Twice his stomach was flushed but nothing came out. Tired of the
humiliation, Baba Suwe through his lawyer, Mr. Bamidele Aturu,
approached a Lagos High Court seeking for the enforcement of his
fundamental human right.
As expected, Baba Suwe’s suit made headlines and that might have
informed the speed with which the matter was handled. During the less
than two months trial, Bamidele Aturu, insisted that the continued
detention of Baba Suwe for 21 days without trial was a breach of his
fundament human right as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution. He prayed
for the release of his client and a N100 million compensation. On its
part, the NDLEA urged that it had reasonable ground to hold Baba Suwe in
its custody as various scans conducted on him confirmed there were
banned substances concealed in his stomach. The narcotic agency also
urged that it obtained a court injunction to detain Baba Suwe nine days
after his arrest.
In an unprecedented record time for any trial in a Nigerian court,
presiding judge, Justice Yetunde Idowu delivered judgment in the
matter. The judge decided the matter in favour of Baba Suwe and ordered
NDLEA to pay him N25 million.
However, over a year now since the
matter was decided Baba Suwe is yet to receive a dime from the
settlement. After a series of appeals and counter appeals, both parties
are still in court.
The first indication that getting the judgment sum will be difficult
for the comic actor emerged when the NDLEA contested the payment of N25
million to Baba Suwe. In an application, NDLEA contended before the
trial court that being a government agency that operate on budgetary
allocation, it would be difficult for it to cough-out N25 million as
compensation for Baba Suwe. The Agency in the application which sought
for a stay of execution of the judgment, prayed the court to allow the
case at the Court of Appeal to be decided before the money could be
paid.
Justice Idowu, however, turned down the application, instructing that
the money should be paid to an interest yielding account pending the
determination of the case before the Court of Appeal. With the N25
million safely deposited in the bank, NDLEA took the battle to the Court
of Appeal.
On the first day of hearing on the matter in July, 2012, the court
made an order for accelerated hearing. The court further ordered the
appealant to file its reply brief on points of law within 14 days. The
order was sequel to an earlier order granting Baba Suwe’s lawyer,
Bamidele Aturu, an extension of time within which to file his respondent
brief.
The court subsequently adjourned the matter till 18 October, 2012 for
hearing of the substantive appeal. On 18 October, the court did not sit
and no new date was communicated to parties in the appeal as the new
adjourned date. As it stands now, nothing is happening to the case.
Bamidele Aturu told our reporter that so far, the appeal court has not communicated any hearing date to him or his client.
“We are yet to get any hearing date for the appeal. We are still
waiting and any time they give us a date, we will appear before the
court,” he said.
On his part, Baba Suwe appears to have to resigned to fate on the
matter as he told an entertainment newspaper recently that he has no
option but to wait. Going by the usual manner cases are delayed at the
Court of Appeal, Baba Suwe may just wait till eternity.
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