- Sowore, Sahara Reporters, Aduda Listed as Co-defendants.
By Vera E. Abah
FORMER Nigerian Ambassador to Namibia and Head of Mission in Jamaica, Ambassador Lilian Onoh, has sued the immediate past Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria, Mr. Geoffrey Onyeama, for defamation in a court in Texas, U.S.A.
Also listed in the suit is Mr Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters and Mr Gabriel Aduda, a former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but now serving in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, directly overseen by President Tinubu himself.
In the suit, which is listed on the website of justia.com, as case number 3:2023cv022838, was filed on December 22, 2023 in US District Court of the Northern District of Texas for libel, assault, slander, Amb Onoh is alleging that the trio of Onyeama, Sowore and Aduda, through Sahara Reporters, defamed her while discrediting her exposure of corruption in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where Mr. Onyeama was Minister from 2015–2023.
Included in the alleged corrupt acts that Onyeama and Aduda were allegedly trying to cover up are the alleged embezzlement of $2.8 million of Red Cross funds for Haiti Earthquake victims by the Ambassador’s predecessor in Jamaica, as well as visa fraud against the USA and other countries by her successor in Jamaica.
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The alleged defamation concerns a report by Sahara Reporters alleging that the Ambassador was indicted and asked to refund N50 million and was also sacked for the “misappropriating N50 million” – something the suit contends was totally false.
According to the suit, which has been assigned to Judge Jane J. Boyle for adjudication although no date has been fixed for hearing, “Ambassador Onoh was never terminated from any posting with the Nigerian Government for misappropriation and no one on behalf of the Nigerian Government contended that misappropriation of funds was the cause of the termination.”
Amb. Onoh further alleged that the actions of Onyeama, Aduda, Sowore and Sahara Reporters were “extreme and outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilised community.”
Ambassador Onoh is seeking damages and costs from the defendants.
Onoh and Onyeama are locked in another legal battle in Abuja, where the former minister had sued her for making libellous remarks in the press.
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The duo are from the same local government area in Enugu State. While Onoh is the daughter of the late Chief Christian C. Onoh, a governor of Enugu State in the Second Republic; Onyeama is the son of a late Charles Onyeama, a former Supreme Court Justice and the International Court of Justice. The Onoh and Onyeama families have been close, as the former minister was briefly married to Lilian Onoh’s sister, Nuzo Onoh, with the union producing Candice Onyeama, a screenwriter and filmmaker.
