Fayemi Sues Arise TV, Former Ekiti Commissioner for Defamation, Demands N500m

The immediate past Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, has filed a N500 million suit against Arise Television and a former Commissioner for Information in the state, Kayode Otitoju, for alleged defamation and malicious airing of offending broadcast against him.

The former governor is demanding N250 million from Arise TV and another N250 million from Otitoju for alleged defamatory comments made by the commissioner as an analyst on the television station on November 22, 2022.

In the suit, HAD/10/2023, filed on January 25, 2023, before an Ekiti State High Court, and made available to newsmen on Sunday, through his lawyer, Babatunde Oke, Fayemi is demanding a retraction of the defamatory statements by the first defendant (Otitoju) while appearing as an analyst on Arise TV.

Fayemi also demanded a public apology published in at least three national newspapers in Nigeria and posted on the internet/social media. He also seeks the leave of the court for a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from making further defamatory publications or statements against him as he also demands the sum of N20 million cost of the suit from them. As well as the 10 per cent interest on the judgment sum from the date the judgment is delivered until the sum is finally liquidated.

Fayemi averred that he had been exposed and subjected to “unwarranted embarrassment, public ridicule, opprobrium, odium, and unprecedented disrepute” on account of the defendants’ false and reckless, malicious statements, which he described as mere fabrication and falsehood orchestrated to taint his good record and image as an upright man and to destroy his future political career.

He said that Otitoju made several damaging and grievous allegations against his person during the said programme, where he described him (Fayemi) as “the problem we have in Ekiti.”

These, he said, included accusing him of colluding with the Federal High Court, Ado Ekiti Judicial Division judge, Justice Babs Kuewumi, to perpetrate perversion of justice in the suit filed by an All Progressives Congress governorship aspirant, Kayode Ojo, against the governorship primary victory of Biodun Oyebanji on January 27, 2022.