Court awards N100m damages against NAN over libellous publication

A High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja has awarded N100m damages against the News Agency of Nigeria for publishing libelous news story against Prophet Emmanuel Omale of the Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries International, Abuja.

Delivering judgment on Tuesday, Justice Yusuf Halilu awarded N50m as general damages to Omale and another N50m as aggravated damages, totalling N100m.

Justice Halilu also gave an order compelling NAN to publish public apology to Omale in three national newspapers with online visibility.

The judge further ordered that such libelous publication should never ever be made against Omale again by NAN.

Recall that Omale had on July 27, 2020 through his lawyer, Chief Goddy Uche (SAN), instituted a legal action againts NAN, seeking N1bn as aggravated and general damages.

NAN had on July 11, 2020 published the libelous publication on its website in which it alleged falsely that Omale laundered N500m abroad for the former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu.

But the First City Monument Bank, through which the amount originated from, later tendered a public apology to Omale over a N573m payment error.

The FCMB managing director, Adamu Nuru, had told the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets that the bank made an error of posting N573m into the church’s account while NAN published the report in its website.

The bank later clarified that there was a system error that affected Omale’s account but no transfer was made.

Omale later dragged FCMB to court while the same Justice Halilu Yusuf ordered the bank to pay N540.5m in damages to Omale and his wife, Deborah, over false claim that they laundered N573m for Magu.

In his judgement on October 4, Justice Halilu held that the bank breached its “duty of care to the claimants,” the Omales and their church.

The judge further held that the evidence before the court showed that the bank admitted error in its report to the NFIU of entries in the account of Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry which was accused of laundering money on Magu’s behalf.

The judge added that the bank claimed that the purported N573m was wrongly reflected as credit entry in Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry’s account by its reporting system, which it recently upgraded.

The judge also held that FCMB admitted the error, which brought incalculable damage to the reputation of the claimants.

Justice Halilu added that the claimants provided sufficient evidence to establish case of negligence against FCMB.