A Nigerian priest has sued the nation’s navy for 500 million naira, saying that naval ratings battered him at a checkpoint on November 30. Both the navy and the priest say he answered his phone a few times while driving through a checkpoint at Ogbaru in Anambra State.
The Sun of Nigeria reported that fellow clergy “stormed a court” in solidarity with the Rev. Tochukwu Agina, a priest of the Anglican Diocese of Ogbaru.
In his a suit against the Nigerian Navy at the Anambra State High Court in Onitsha, Agina says his rights to dignity of the human person, personal liberty and freedom of movement, as guaranteed by Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution, were violated.
The suit also names the Nigerian Navy Board; Kabiru Yusuf, commander of the Onitsha/Ogbaru Naval Base; the naval head of Okpotouno Naval Checkpoin; and other naval officers.
Agina asks the court to declare that his arrest and detention by naval officers were unlawful, illegal, and unconstitutional.
He is also seeking a declaration that his alleged harassment, humiliation and brutalisation at the Okpotouno Naval Checkpoint, Ogbaru, constituted an improper exercise of authority and violated his constitutional rights.
According to the applicant, he was accused of answering phone calls at the checkpoint, ordered to alight from a commercial vehicle, and subsequently detained at the naval base, actions he said infringed on his rights to personal liberty, dignity, and freedom of movement.
Agina seeks an unreserved apology, to be published in a national newspaper acceptable to him.
When the matter came up for hearing, the presiding judge of High Court No. 3, Justice David Onyefulu, ordered that the respondents be served with court processes through a national newspaper.
The court is scheduled to hear the case further on January 22.
Agina’s lead counsel said: “It is totally unacceptable that an innocent priest in his priestly attire would be brutalized in the public glare, dehumanized without any form of restraint from the senior naval officers at the checkpoint.”
