You Must Pay Odi People N38Bn, Court Tells FG

The Justice Lambo Akanbi-led Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers state has rejected the stay of execution sought by the Federal Government over her February ruling ordering the federal government to pay N37.6 billion as damages to the residents of Odi in Bayelsa State.

Akanbi said the applicants (the federal government) had not shown any special circumstances that would warrant the stay of execution of the judgment.

The judge noted that following the invasion of the community, the dead in their graves were crying for justice, and that the world is watching on what was happening, adding that the court must be alive to its responsibility.

The judge in reviewing the submissions of the counsel to the parties contended that the application therefore lacked merit and consequently dismissed it with the sum of N25,000 as cost, contrary to the demand by Mr. Ifedayo Adedipe (SAN), one of the lawyers to the Odi community.

Earlier, counsel to the federal government, Minister of Defence, Chief of Defence Staff and Attornery-General of the Federation, Mr. Michael Nomeh, representing Okeaya-Inneh (SAN), had urged the court to stay execution of the judgment delivered on February 19 this year in favour of the judgment creditors/respondents, pending the appeal.

It would be recalled that the court had on February given the federal government  21 days to pay the sum of N37.6 billion to the people of Odi over the invasion of the community by armed soldiers in 1999; leading to several deaths and destruction of property.

In the court’s ruling, the judge then described the action of the government and soldiers as “genocidal.”

The Federal Government had filed an application for a stay of execution of the judgement pending the determination of the government’s appeal at the Court of Appeal.

Counsels to the Ogoni opposed the application.

Akanbi dismissed the application and asked the federal government to make the payment.

The February judgment came exactly 14 years and three months after the November 20, 1999 military invasion of Odi.

It was also a landmark indictment of the then barely six-month-old democratic Presidency of  Olusegun Obasanjo, who only two years after that (from October 22 – 24, 2001) ordered another vicious military operation that led to a large scale destruction of lives and property in Zaki Biam, Benue state.

While the government of the late President Yar’adua had offered to settle the Zaki Biam matter out of court in order not to appeal a Gboko High Court judgement that granted Zaki Biam community a N40 billion compensation, it became protracted upon the demise of President Yar’adua.

Prior to the Odi massacre, 12 members of the Nigerian police were murdered by a gang near Odi, seven on November 4 and the remainder in the following days.

In revenge, the military invaded, exchanged fire, and then proceeded to indiscriminately attack the civilian population and the town's buildings.

Every building in the town except the bank, the Anglican church and the health center was burned to the ground.