PDP chairman Uche Secondus gets court order refraining government from adding him to looters list

PEOPLES Democratic Party (PDP) chairman Prince Uche Secondus has secured a high court injunction preventing information minister Alhaji Lai Mohammed from naming him among the list of looters published by the federal government.

Earlier this month, the government published a list of members of the PDP who it alleged looted the economy when they were in power. Prince Secondus was the pioneer chairman of the governing board of the National Identity Management Commission when the PDP was in power and has been named as someone who appropriated public funds.

However, Prince Secondus successfully got the Rivers State High Court in Port Harcourt to  restrained Alhaji Mohammed from further mentioning his name with regards to the list of looters. Justice I A Iyayi-Lamikanta, trial judge and chief judge of River State, granted the order for one of two prayers in a motion seeking an interlocutory injunction in restraining the defendants from further publishing the libellous content.

Prince Secondus is suing Alhaji Mohammed along with federal government and Vintage Press, for N1.5bn, as damages for alleged libel. Earlier this month, his name was listed as a looter to the extent that he collected N200m on 19 February 2015 from the office of the then national security adviser.

Emeka Etiaba, Prince Secondus's counsel, said:  “There is no truth in what they published, so I can understand why they are not in court but by the time the restraining order comes, maybe they will take us more seriously. We have told Nigerians this is one case of executive recklessness which comes up once in a while.

"We hope at the end of the day, we prove to Nigerians that this is nothing but a gimmick, a ploy to destroy the PDP and its leadership because of the 2019. The court was minded to believe that that prayer deals with publications that go beyond the ones that had our plaintiff’s name."

Aside the claim for the payment of N1.5bn as damages in the substantive suit, Prince Secondus is also pleading the court that defendants retract the libellous material in as many media as they published it among other claims. Ahead of the adjourned date, the court ordered that the plaintiff’s counsels serve the defendants hearing notice, same way they served them the originating processes and the accompanying documents in the newspaper.