The Federal Government has just been slammed with a $5 million dollar lawsuit by a Nigerian lawyer and social welfare campaigner, Mr. Emmanuel Ogebe.
This lawsuit was filed on grounds that the Nigerian government over what he considers an attempt to smear his reputation.
He said the government led a “malicious campaign to tarnish his image” and demanded that apologies be published in major newspapers in addition to the $5 million compensation, PT writes.
The lawyer who is based in the United States was formerly charged with the education and protection of 10 rescued Chibok girls in the United States.
The suit filed January 27 is reportedly in response to a press briefing by Ms Alhassan in September last year accusing him of exploiting his position as the guardian of the rescued Chibok girls in the U.S. to extort money.
“We got the information that the girls were being used as tools for making money – not prostitution – but in the sense that they will be taken here and there where they go and relay their experiences during the insurgency, especially the invasion of Chibok town by Boko Haram and how they were abducted.
“After that, people used them to ask for donations; by so doing they make money out of it. So the girls became fed up; and started complaining that they were taken to U.S. on an arrangement that they were going to send them to school and that they were going to pay for their school. But unfortunately they said they were not allowed to remain in school,” Ms. Alhassan told reporters in Maiduguri on September 9, 2016.
Her interview came a few months after the Nigerian government sacked Mr. Ogebe as the guardian of the girls and took them away from him.
Salisu Isah, the Spokesman for Attorney-General Abubakar Malami, said his principal will respond to the lawsuit as soon as he returns from a trip abroad.
“He is not in the country for now,” Mr. Isah said. “I’ll get back to you with his response to the libel claims as soon as he gets back.”
The rescued Chibok girls are presently under the protection of the Nigerian Embassy in the U.S.
