SShe listed the Comptroller-General of the NIS and the EFCC as defendants in her suit prosecuted on her behalf by by a team of lawyers led by Funke Agbor (SAN). In her suit, marked FHC/L/CS/147/2020, she detailed how she suffered rights violations in hands of the government agencies. The suit was filed on February 3, 2020 to enforce her rights.
According to her, it started during her arrival in Lagos from London on January 14, 2020, when she said she was detained for several hours without explanation. Similarly, on January 29, 2020, Mrs Lulu-Briggs said she was stopped from travelling at the Lagos International Airport. “She was kept in a solitary room till 2:00 a.m. on January 30, 2020. She was released without her international passport and other travel documents.
The respondents justified the seizure of her passport and her detention. In its counter-affidavit to the suit, EFCC argued that Mrs Lulu-Briggs was under investigation and granted an administrative bail, which she jumped; a development, it said, compelled it to place her on a watch list and ask the immigration service to seize her travelling documents.
Delivering his judgment yesterday, Mr Faji held that there was no material evidence before the court that Mrs Lulu-Briggs was under investigation for any crime and that there was, therefore, no justification for the treatment meted out to her. He held that NIS can only prohibit the movement of any person based on the order of a court of competent jurisdiction or a warrant of arrest issued by either a judge or magistrate, adding that the seizure of the applicant’s passport by the anti-graft agency and immigration was unlawful. |Additional information from Premium Times.