Fayose slams N20bn suit on EFCC over watchlist order

Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti state has filed a lawsuit against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for placing him on its watchlist, and writing to security agencies demanding that he be arrested if he tries to flee the country.

Fayose filed the suit through his counsel Obafemi Adewale on Friday after declaring to do so unless the EFCC published a written apology to all security agencies in Nigeria, 3 national dailies, and on social media.

The EFCC didn’t, and he’s charging the anti-graft agency to court.

He is seeking an order of the court directing the EFCC to pay him N20bn damages for “flagrant, deliberate, pre-meditated and reckless libel and unprovoked attack on his character and reputation and the breach of his constitutional right/immunity as an incumbent Governor.”

He also wants the court to declare:

“That the EFCC letter placing him on watch-list and directing his arrest on sight even while a sitting Governor is unconstitutional as same offends the clear provision of Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) which clothes the him with immunity against arrest and prosecution as an incumbent Governor.

“That the tweet by the Defendant (EFCC) through its official twitter handle, which was widely circulated through social media and published on Punch Newspaper (online) of 16th July, 2018, with the particulars wordings pleaded in the Statement of Claim filed along with this Writ is not true, is malicious, is not a fair statement and presents the Plaintiff as a fraudster thereby ridiculing him and reducing him in the eyes of reasonable and right-thinking members of the society.”