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… Demands N1b damages
From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
The Senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial Zone, Senator Lawal Adamu Usman has denied using any fraudulent academic certificate as part of documents presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) during the 2023 election process .
The All Progressives Congress (APC) is challenging the election victory of the PDP Senator, on the grounds that he did not attend some schools he claimed in his INEC nomination form.
One of the witnesses, a former student of the department of Public Administration of Ameer Shehu ldris College of Advanced Studies, Zaria, Halima Ibrahim Ndanusa in recent story published by a national daily (Not Daily Sun) claimed that the serving senator from Kaduna State used her result to gain admission into a university.
However, in his reaction , Senator Lawal Adamu Usman in a two-page letter through his solicitors Messrs E. N. Ogbu & Associates stated that the story published on 12th July, 2023 with caption: “KADUNA SENATOR USED MY RESULT FOR VARSITY ADMISSION, WITNESS TELLS TRIBUNAL is Libelous and defamatory , thus threatened legal action against the media report.
The Senator, who demanded for immediate retraction of the story filed for damages in the sum of N1,000,000,000 (One Billion Naira Only) against the newspapers for publishing the report targeted at tarnishing his image and reputation.
According to the letter, the contents of the said newspaper publication portrayed Senator Lawal Adamu Usman as one,who made illegal and fraudulent use of a certificate belonging to one Halima Ibrahim Ndanusa to gain admission into a university .
The letter further stated: “And further went on in the reportage to add that the said Halima Ibrahim Ndanusa made the said piece of malicious information known in an appearance at the Election Petitions Tribunal while seeking for justice and prosecution of the offenders for using her results fraudulently as captured in Paragraphs 1, 2, and 10 of the online publication made available to us by our Client.”
The Senator’s solicitors further averred that Senator Lawal Usman is of the firm contention that, “the veracity or otherwise of the entire reportage captioned herein are proceedings of a Tribunal,which are available to the general public as it relates to what transpired before the Tribunal in actual fact. Stating that as unfair as the reportage could be,he was never called upon to hear his own version of what actually transpired.
“However, the procedure to obtain this facts were thrown to the wind with respect to the reportage in itself as same, according to our Client were a calculated effort to wickedly dent an image and status earned over the years by dint of hard work.
“Our Client has suffered emotional and psychological trauma over the “fake news” printed to dent his hard earned reputation in the eyes of the public over an information that is not only false but inexistent.
“And to make matters worst ,same unscrupulous information were carried by another national daily (Not Daily Sun), a widely circulated media house in Nigeria and abroad without authenticating same in the first place. An action our Client considers severely damaging as no amount of money may remedy the humiliation and damage caused to his reputation as a result of the said reckless publication.
“The Nigerian Government has times without numbers strictly warned the generality of the public against spreading what is now known to be “fake news.” The letter read in part.
The lawmaker however, said, “if after 7 days of receipt of the letter, the media house fail, omit, refuse, and/or neglect to formally retract the said libelous piece of information, which our Client considers defamatory of his person and apologize, he would take legal action”. The letter added.
