Court to hear NDLEA’s appeal against Baba Suwe

The Court of Appeal in Lagos has fixed October 18 for the hearing of an appeal by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency against the judgment of a Lagos High Court ordering it to pay N25m as damages to Yoruba actor, Babatunde Omidina, aka Baba Suwe.

The appellate court also declined to hear any further application for stay of execution filed by the NDLEA but granted an accelerated hearing of the appeal.

Justice Yetunde Idowu had in her judgment on November 24, 2011, ordered the agency to pay N25m to the actor and apologise to him publicly on “conspicuous pages of two national daily newspapers” for keeping him in custody beyond the legal time limit on the suspicion of drug ingestion.

Idowu, in the judgment, held that the detention of the actor and the ill treatment meted to him while in custody violated his constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

The judge had also on March 2, 2012, granted a partial stay of execution of the judgment by ordering the NDLEA to pay the money to the Chief Registrar of the court who would in turn pay it into an interest-yielding account.

On granting the accelerated hearing of the appeal, the court adjourned till October 18 for hearing of the substantive appeal.

Baba Suwe was arrested by operatives of the NDLEA at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport on the October 12, 2011.

He was detained for a period of 23 days without any evidence that he ingested any banned substance as he did not excrete any of such throughout the period of his incaceration.

The agency’s, among other grounds for its stay of execution, was that it was incapable of paying the judgement debt as the “N25m awarded the respondent (Baba Suwe) is half of the monthly budgetary resources the appellant/applicant (NDLEA) has to perform its statutory duties.”