Ondo loses appeal against N30m court judgement awarded to man shot by Amotekun

The Court of Appeal in Akure, Ondo State, has affirmed a judgement awarding N30 million to Oluwarotimi Oluwasegun, a commercial motorcyclist who was shot in the leg two years ago by the state government’s Security Network Agency, code-named Amotekun.

A panel of justices of the court affirmed the award of N30 million to Mr Oluwasegun after striking out the appeal filed by the Ondo State Government to challenge the judgement of the state’s High Court in Akure.

Mr Oluwasegun’s lawyer, Tope Temokun, gave the update from the Court of Appeal in Akure in a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday.

The Court of Appeal said the state government’s appeal against the High Court’s judgement was incompetent.

It handed down the decision after listening to a lawyer from Mr Temokun’s law firm, Adedotun Adegoroye, and the Ondo State Government’s lawyer, Oluwasegun Akeredolu, on Tuesday.

After striking out the appeal, the court awarded N250,000 in cost against the Ondo State Government.

A judge of the state High Court, Omolara Adejumo, held in a judgement delivered on 29 March 2023 that the state government-run Amotekun was culpable for the shooting of Mr Oluwasegun in August 2021, which led to the amputation of one his legs.

The state government went on an appeal against the judgement but lost on Tuesday.

The Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice, Kayode Ajulo, whose office prosecutes cases like this for the state government, had yet to respond to our reporter’s request for comments as of the time of filing this report.

The case predated Mr Ajulo’s appointment.

Mr Oluwasegun commenced the legal action against the Ondo State Government and Amotekun at the state High Court in Akure on 28 October 2022, a year after the incident happened.

His lawyer said he filed the suit after receiving a 26 October 2022 reply from the state government to his complaint letter, alleging that his client was arrested while the Amotekun officers were on a trail of kidnap and armed robbery suspects.

He had said it was wicked to link his client to such crimes.

How it happened

Mr Oluwasegun, father of two boys, nine-year-old Samuel and six-year-old Oluwadarasimi, recounted his ordeals at the hands of Amotekun operatives in his suit.

He said Amotekun operatives attacked him between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on 9 August 2021 in Akure.

In court filings, he narrated that a passenger had just alighted from his motorcycle at a neighbourhood in Araromi, Akure, when an Amotekun’s van suddenly swerved towards him by the roadside and the occupants began to shoot into the air as the vehicle came to a stop.

He said people around, scared by the gunshots, fled, but he stood back.

“I did not run because I presumed the officers were carrying out their lawful duties, and, more so, when I did not do anything incriminating that might warrant me to flee at the sight of Amotekun officers,” he wrote in his supporting affidavit.

Surprised that he did not flee like others, four Amotekun men, Mr Oluwasegun said, “alighted from the van, accosted me, and to my surprise, they started to harass and beat me.”

He said he was still struggling to make a sense of the situation when one of the Amotekun officers “fired a shot on my leg with the rifle he had tied to his neck.”

The men then dragged him into the back of their van and drove him to the Amotekun Headquarters at Alagbaka, where he was later abandoned, Mr Oluwasegun said.

According to the claimant, at their office, he was abandoned outside uncared for, until a senior officer came out and directed that he be taken to the outfit’s medical unit.

At the Amotekun’s medical unit, he said, nurses only bandaged the gunshot injury and referred him to the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owo, “for immediate treatment of the leg.”

The Okada rider recounted how the Amotekun men drove him roughly down to Owo, with his fractured thigh “barely hanging to the flesh” for 45 minutes that seemed to him “like 45 years” of pain.

He said he was treated for barely 24 hours when he learnt on Tuesday, 10 August 2021, the day after the incident, that the medical staff of the hospital went on strike.

“This was the end of any meaningful medical attention that the leg got at FMC Owo,” he said.

With no further care, the condition of the wound worsened, and the leg became smelly as it began to decay, which led to the amputation.

Judgement enforcement efforts

Mr Temokun, the victim’s lawyer, recalled in his statement on Tuesday that he began taking steps for the implementation of the earlier High Court judgement by writing to the office of the Ondo State Governor in 2023. He said the governor’s office received his letter on 30 March 2023.

He said he sent a separate letter dated 30 March 2023 and delivered on 31 March 2023 to the Office of the Attorney-General of Ondo State.

According to Mr Temokun, the letter pleaded with the Attorney-General of the State to advise the Government of Ondo State to comply with the High Court judgment.

He said his letter stressed that it was “against public policy to use state resources to prosecute an appeal against a vulnerable citizen who is now an amputee, after the government agency shot him in the leg.”

While waiting for a reply to his letters, he said, the state government filed a notice of appeal dated 3 April 2023 against the judgement.