Posted by A lawyer named Maxwell Opara has sued Twitter and the Department of State Services (DSS) for defamation and is requesting N10 billion in damages.
Malachy Nwaekpe filed a summons at the FCT High Court with the writ of summons marked: FCT/HC/CV/7186/23, and Opara named Twitter Nigeria Limited and the Director-General (DG) of the State Security Service (commonly known as the DSS) as the first and second defendants.
In the lawsuit dated August 11 and filed on August 14, the State Security Service, the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), and the Minister of Justice are each identified as the third and fourth defendants.
The attorney filed the lawsuit in response to the claim that Twitter, now known as X, “negligently allowed the defamatory, ethnic profiling, and racist comments” made against him by the DSS on July 18 for more than 96 hours on the security agency’s platform.
Opara called the statement “false, defamatory, demeaning, disparaging and harmful.” He claimed that the post was meant to be published and spread to millions of readers.
In order to address this, he requested eight reliefs, including “an order of this honourable court directing the 2nd and 3rd defendants (DG and DSS), jointly and severally, to issue a letter of apology on the 1st defendant’s platform twitter and a daily newspaper widely read throughout the federation of Nigeria.”
He asked the court to issue an order directing the defendants to pay N10 billion to the claimant as general damages for the various defamatory, demeaning, disparaging, and harmful statements made by the third defendant under the direction of the second defendant, which statements were published and made widely known by the first defendant through its Twitter platform.
From the date of the judgment until it is completely liquidated, “an award of 10% post-judgment interest per annum on the entire judgment sum,” he continued.
At the time of the report, the case had not yet been given a decision.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the DSS was cited as writing the following in the tweet: “Charge and bail, overzealous uneducated IPOB/ESN lawyer Maxwell Okpara organizes other like-minded lawyers against DGSS.
“Wasteful Efforts. Nigerians, take caution! This is done with malice. transferred violence.
“A proponent of the Biafran Republic and banned IPOB attorney defending the CBN governor on suspension.
Is IPOB standing up for one of them? What a contradiction, what’s the relationship, and could Maxwell please get some legal education?