PM NEWS
A Rivers State High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has asked ThisDay Newspaper to pay N200 million as damages to Governor Nyesom Wike over an alleged libel in one of the stories published in one of its editions.
Defendants in the suit are Thisday Newspapers Limited, Leaders and Company Limited, Davidson Iriekpan, Chuks Okocha and Adibe Emenyonu.
Justice Enebeli, declared that the article was demonstratively “false even to the knowledge of the defendants, as they did not honestly believe the facts to be true. And yet in a bid to portray their recklessness, they went ahead to publish the libellous article.
“The claimant, apart from being the governor of Rivers State, a politician, he also a lawyer by profession by calling, and he is a life bencher, an august body of the legal profession and with numerous national and state laurels as evidence show. It will not be just and right for him to live with a permanent apparent stigma of being an influencer of court cases and judges as if noble judges are his lackeys and protegees.”
Justice Enebeli asserted that the offensive article is injurious to Wike’s reputation, his profession and calling. He noted that the defendants were requested earlier on to retract the article and render apology through the newspaper, but they treated it with vexatious rebuff, intransigent, maintaining their stand…
