When on 24 November, 2011, Justice Yetunde Idowu of an Ikeja High Court in Lagos ordered the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency , NDLEA, to pay popular actor and movie producer Babatunde Omidina, N25 million, as compensation for his wrongful detention over allegation of possessing cocaine, many believed that it was justice well-deserved.
He was arrested by officials of NDLEA at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos while travelling to Paris, France to attend a naming ceremony of an Air France staff. Baba Suwe, as Babatunde Omidina is popularly known, was made to undergo harrowing experience of excreting a non-existent hard drug purportedly hidden in his stomach.
For 21 days, officials of NDLEA insisted that the comic actor had stacks of banned substance in his stomach. Their conviction was that several scan carried out on him showed he had some banned substance concealed in his stomach. The entire country waited anxiously for him to excrete the substance. Day after day, Baba Suwe was taken from one hospital to the other in an effort to get the presumed substance out. Twice his stomach was flushed but nothing came out. Tired of the humiliation, Baba Suwe through his lawyer, Mr. Bamidele Aturu, approached a Lagos High Court seeking for the enforcement of his fundamental human right.
As expected, Baba Suwe’s suit made headlines and that might have informed the speed with which the matter was handled. During the less than two months trial, Bamidele Aturu, insisted that the continued detention of Baba Suwe for 21 days without trial was a breach of his fundament human right as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution. He prayed for the release of his client and a N100 million compensation. On its part, the NDLEA urged that it had reasonable ground to hold Baba Suwe in its custody as various scans conducted on him confirmed there were banned substances concealed in his stomach. The narcotic agency also urged that it obtained a court injunction to detain Baba Suwe nine days after his arrest.
In an unprecedented record time for any trial in a Nigerian court, presiding judge, Justice Yetunde Idowu delivered judgment in the matter. The judge decided the matter in favour of Baba Suwe and ordered NDLEA to pay him N25 million.
However, over a year now since the matter was decided Baba Suwe is yet to receive a dime from the settlement. After a series of appeals and counter appeals, both parties are still in court.
The first indication that getting the judgment sum will be difficult for the comic actor emerged when the NDLEA contested the payment of N25 million to Baba Suwe. In an application, NDLEA contended before the trial court that being a government agency that operate on budgetary allocation, it would be difficult for it to cough-out N25 million as compensation for Baba Suwe. The Agency in the application which sought for a stay of execution of the judgment, prayed the court to allow the case at the Court of Appeal to be decided before the money could be paid.
Justice Idowu, however, turned down the application, instructing that the money should be paid to an interest yielding account pending the determination of the case before the Court of Appeal. With the N25 million safely deposited in the bank, NDLEA took the battle to the Court of Appeal.
On the first day of hearing on the matter in July, 2012, the court made an order for accelerated hearing. The court further ordered the appealant to file its reply brief on points of law within 14 days. The order was sequel to an earlier order granting Baba Suwe’s lawyer, Bamidele Aturu, an extension of time within which to file his respondent brief.
The court subsequently adjourned the matter till 18 October, 2012 for hearing of the substantive appeal. On 18 October, the court did not sit and no new date was communicated to parties in the appeal as the new adjourned date. As it stands now, nothing is happening to the case.
Bamidele Aturu told our reporter that so far, the appeal court has not communicated any hearing date to him or his client.
“We are yet to get any hearing date for the appeal. We are still waiting and any time they give us a date, we will appear before the court,” he said.
On his part, Baba Suwe appears to have to resigned to fate on the matter as he told an entertainment newspaper recently that he has no option but to wait. Going by the usual manner cases are delayed at the Court of Appeal, Baba Suwe may just wait till eternity.
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