Western Publishing Company Limited & Anor V. Dr. Kayode Fayemi (2015)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report – COURT OF APPEAL

BOLOUKUROMO MOSES UGO, J.C.A. (Delivering the Leading Judgment)

This appeal raises some interesting issues of the practice and procedure of, and the assessment/award of damages in, libel actions.

The appeal itself stems from, and is against, the judgment of the High Court of Ekiti State, presided over by C.I. Akintayo J., wherein in Suit No HAD/84/2012 it adjudged the appellants (the defendants in the lower court) liable for Libel and consequently awarded aggravated damages of Two Billion Naira (N2,000,000,000), among other orders, against them and in favour of the respondent (claimant at the lower court) who was at the material time the Governor of Ekiti State.

The subject matter of the said libel is contained in four editions of the appellants’ Nigerian Compass newspaper which, it is common ground, is widely circulated and read all over Nigeria, especially Ekiti State, and also has a website in the internet that makes it accessible to the whole world.

In their said publications, of which three were tendered at the trial as exhibits as Exhibits I, J, and K (the 4th untendered one being also admitted by the appellants to have been published by them), they alleged:

1. In the Saturday, August 25, 2012 edition (Exhibit I) the following headline story in its front page and credited to the 2nd appellant (stated as its Abuja correspondent):

HELP! Fayemi is deducting N1 billion from councils monthly -NULGE.

The said headline – with the capitalized word HELP printed in red like the paper’s masthead with the obvious intention of attracting special attention – which continues on its second page with the same very bold title but this time in blue print (the only news item in blue print in the entire paper 48-page paper), alleged that the Ekiti State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) had accused the respondent, the Governor of the state, of “dipping his hands into the purse of the third tier of government” and “deducting a minimum of N1b from the local government accounts monthly in the last few months.”

The publication, said to be based on a letter the appellants claimed to have obtained from Ekiti State chapter of NULGE, alleged among others NULGE’s purported complaint of the inability of the Ekiti State Government under the respondent’s leadership to pay its workers the new minimum wage approved for local government councils. The publication ended on the following note on p.2 of the paper:

“The union restated its belief that the federal allocations to local government councils in the state could accommodate the new wages but for the belief that the money is being diverted by the Fayemi administration.”

2. The foregoing publication was quickly followed by a second one against the respondent by the appellants in their same newspaper the following day, Sunday, 26th August, 2012, on page 12. This time they accused him of using his position as Governor of the state to withdraw in one fell swoop a staggering sum of N250,000,000 (Two Hundred And Fifty Million Naira) from the coffers of Ekiti State Government with a view to bribing the Chief Justice of Nigeria and other Justices of the Supreme Court who were then hearing the appeal of his predecessor, former Governor Segun Oni, against the respondent’s election. For this act, the appellants further alleged, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had asked the security agencies in the country to investigate the respondent. This publication, unlike the others, was not tendered, but the appellants in paragraph 7 of their statement of defence admitted publishing it, saying it was based purely on a statement credited to the PDP asking security agencies in the country to probe the claimant on his frequent trips to the United States of America where the Justices were believed to be vacationing then.
3. Six days later, on Saturday, 1st September 2012, the appellants came out with yet a third publication, Exhibit J, against the respondent, in very bold and screaming letters (with some words either given a special background or again out-rightly printed in red to attract readership) and as headline news of that day’s edition of their same newspaper. It was about ‘further developments’ concerning the N1b monthly council funds deduction and had the following headline:

Alleged illegal N1b deduction from Local Council funds: Ekiti NULGE dares Fayemi to go to court.

The appellants here wrote of a purported interview they had with the secretary of NULGE Ekiti State who was said to have laughed off a demand by the respondent to his Union to retract its letter or face litigation and was said to have dared him to go to court.

4. In a fourth publication (Exhibit K) on 4th September 2012 in their same paper, appellants under another headline “Controversy trails plan to cover up alleged N1b LG deduction in Ekiti” wrote of purported efforts being made by the respondent to cover up what they (appellants) referred to as the N1b ‘illegal deduction’ from Local Government account by ‘hurriedly calling an emergency Federal and General Purposes Committee (F & GPC) meeting where Caretaker Chairmen under the aegis of Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON) agreed to co-fund the renovation of secondary schools in the state with N1b each.’

In his seventeen-paragraph statement of claim, the respondent complained that the appellants’ stories were all concocted, baseless, unfounded and deliberately and callously misrepresented by them to the public and accorded undue and undeserved sensationalism without any attempt to hear his own side of the story contrary to ethics of journalism.

He complained, too, that any reasonable man reading the publications of the appellants would get the impression that he was an irresponsible and fraudulent Governor who siphoned public funds at the detriment of the Local Government Councils’ workers and growth and development of the Local Government Areas of Ekiti State; that he was also portrayed as a selfish Governor who shamelessly in one fell swoop withdrew a staggering sum of N250,000,000.00 (Two Hundred And Fifty Million Naira only) from the coffers of the Ekiti State Government and travelled abroad with the Governor of Osun State to bribe the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and some Justices of the Supreme Court currently on vacation abroad so as to put undue pressure on them with a view to perverting the cause of justice in his appeal before them.

He said he demanded from the appellants a retraction of the offending publications but they arrogantly ignored same and rather went further to concoct and fabricate an interview purportedly granted by the Secretary of the NULGE Ekiti State where they claimed NULGE dared him to go to Court when in actual fact the Secretary of NULGE in the State never granted any press interview.