Olukoya Ogungbede, a lawyer to kidnap kingpin, Evans, has lost a case he filed on behalf two Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, detainees in Federal High Court in Lagos state.
Ogungbeje was defeated on Friday, when Justice Ibrahim Buba dismissed the two fundamental rights applications.
His case on behalf Messrs Chief Kenneth Chukwuemeka Ajoku and Chidinma Ozurumba, against the EFCC was dismissed for lack of merit and for being frivolous.
Other respondents in Ajoku’s suit are a Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Taiwo Kupolati, Folorunsho Sholanke, Jide Olaleye, Abraham Ogunleye, Kolade Akinwunmi and Dr. Ishaku Danladi Msheliza.
The two petitioners, in suits marked FHC/L/CS/736/2017 and FHC/L/CS 803/2017, urged the court to declare that the arrest and detention by the operatives and agents of EFCC on May 4, at the instigation of other respondents for taking up the brief of his client and without cause, was “illegal, wrongful, unlawful, and unconstitutional as it violates the applicant’s fundamental rights as guaranteed under sections 33, 34, 35 and 36 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
The EFCC while responding to the suits in two separate counter-affidavits deposed to by Ayodele Samuel and Makinde Adebayo, urged the judge to refuse the applicants’ applications for being frivolous and lacking in merit.
In his verdict on the two applications, Justice Buba, did not only dismissed the two applications, but awarded a total cost of N500,000 against the two applicants in favour of the EFCC and other respondents.
Ogungbeje has also filed such fundamental rights suit against police authorities in a bid to set Evans free.
