The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on Wednesday applied for a stay of execution on an earlier court order that the agency should pay N25 million to Nollywood actor, Babatunde Omidina, aka Baba Suwe, for violating his rights to personal liberty.
NDLEA Director of Prosecution and Legal services, Femi Oloruntoba while moving the application before Justice Yetunde Idowu said that the agency will be prevented from performing its statutory functions as well as prosecuting the appeal if it is made to pay the judgment sum of N25 million which is about half of its monthly available resources.
According to Mr Oloruntoba, the budgetary allocation for the agency is about N7billion. Of this sum only about N52 million monthly is available for all its activities including investigations and litigations as well as running cost of about N603 million which goes into workers salary and personnel cost.
The agency says this amount is grossly inadequate.
Besides this lack of funds, the NDLEA says Baba Suwe will not be able to refund the judgment sum of N25 million if the appeal filed by the agency succeeds.
On the issue of apology, the NDLEA says that if it is made to publish an apology to Baba Suwe in two national dailies as ordered by the court, the apology cannot be retracted if the appeal succeeds, and its right to appeal will also become highly prejudiced.
Mr Oloruntoba concluded that the NDLEA can only provide a bank guarantee of the judgment sum if it negotiates with the bank where its account is domiciled as it has accrued financial liabilities which it is unable to pay due to paucity of funds.
However counsel to Baba Suwe, Bamidele Aturu has opposed the application for stay of judgment execution on the basis that “the successful party in litigation should not be refused the fruit of its litigation”.
According to him, the NDLEA can conveniently pay the judgment sum as it is does not have any accrued financial liability as alleged adding that some paragraphs of its affidavit in support of the application for stay of execution are false.
Mr Aturu also says his client, Baba Suwe is able to refund the judgment sum to the agency in the event that the NDLEA’s appeal succeeds.
Mr Aturu has urged the court to refuse the application for stay of execution in respect of the judgment and asked the court to give an order mandating NDLEA to deposit the judgment sum with the Chief Registrar of the court who will in turn deposit it in an interest yielding account pending appeal.
Justice Idowu has adjourned the matter till the 2nd of March for ruling.
