Apo killings: Court halts N135m payment to victims

A Federal High Court, Abuja, has injuctively authorized a stay of execution of orders by the National Human Rights Commission, which awarded N135m to relatives and victims of the September 20, 2013 attack and killing of eight squatters in an uncompleted building in Apo, Abuja.

Justice Gabriel Kolawole, in an ex-parte ruling on June 27, additionally granted leave to the State Security Service to apply for an order of certiorari to quash the decisions and awards contained in the NHRC’s report on complaint No: C/2013/7908/HQ.

The judge authoritatively mandated that the leave granted should apply as stay of execution of the orders and awards in the report “so that the proceedings in this matter are not subverted by any step that may be taken to seek to enforce or enforce the decision,” as captured by the report.

Justice Kolawole, in his ruling, directed the SSS to file its kineticism on notice and accommodate it on the respondents.

He authoritatively mandated the respondents to respond within eight days and fine-tuned July 9 as the return date.

The commission had, in its report relinquished in April 2014, faulted the claim by the SSS and the Nigerian Army that the eight and 11 injured others were affected during the exchange of fire between security agents and suspected Boko Haram members.

The NHRC had in the case tagged, ‘Global Rights and 3 others vs. Federal Republic of Nigeria and 3 others’, authoritatively mandated the Federal Government to, among others, pay a total of N135m as emolument to the victims.

The SSS was expected to pay N10m for each of those killed and N5m to each of the 11 injured survivors.

But the SSS verbally expressed it was never invited or interrogated during the preliminary investigations conducted by the NHRC in deference to the incident.

It integrated that it was not given a facsimile of the petitions lodged by the Global Rights, Human Rights Law Office and National Association of Commercial Tricycle and Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association.

The SSS, through its application, is seeking to quash the report of the NHRC on the grounds that the Commission was partial against it throughout the proceedings of the public inquiry in that it was not given any fair aurally perceiving during the preliminary investigation.