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One of the appointees of Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, Omowunmi Isaac, who is the state Commissioner for Finance, and her brother have filed a suit against 35 elders in All Progressives Congress (APC) for allegedly publishing a libelous material against them.
Appearing for himself and seven among his co-defendants in a suit that was mentioned for hearing on Tuesday at the Ondo State High Court sitting in Akure, Adekola Olawoye, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), told the court that they(defendants) were open to out-of-court settlement.
The attorney, who is the first defendant in the suit, told the court that himself and other defendants in the suit were APC leaders and elders from the same Owo Local Government Area of the state with the claimants.
The other 27 co-defendants in the suit were represented by other counsels.
Olawoue told the court that himself and other co-defendants had come to file a preliminary objection challenging the jurisdiction of the court and the competence of the processes filed by the claimants.
He said, however, the claimants filed an application seeking to correct some defects in their processes, which none of the defendants was opposed to.
The Senior Advocate said the court subsequently awarded N100,000 costs in favour of each of the 35 defendants, amounting to N3.5 million.
He said the court therefore adjourned the hearing to October 8, 2026.
Speaking on what transpired between them, defendants, and the claimants, Olawoye said: “The crux of their action is that I wrote a letter to the National Chairman of our great party, APC. The letter was couriered directly to the National Chairman, which is our legal right under the law.”
According to him, the letter in contention was not published to a third party, but was written to draw the attention of the party’s national leadership to what he described as “funny developments” within the APC in their local government.
He disclosed that the claimants had earlier petitioned the Inspector-General of Police over the matter, leading to the defendants being invited to Abuja on March 24, 2026.
Olawoye said: “At the end of the day, the Honourable Commissioner of Police in charge of the IGP Special Team saw no reason for detaining us. We were merely warned and advised. We went back home.”
He further disclosed that efforts had been made to resolve the dispute out of court, as the defendants in the suit had reached out to relevant authorities in the state without yielding the desired result yet.
“As an elder of the party, you must know that I will accommodate settlement. We made moves. We talked to the authorities concerned in the state. But they feel otherwise,” the SAN said.
Olawoye, therefore, appealed to all members of APC in the state to bury the hatchet ahead of the 2027 general elections.
He called on them not to allow internal disagreements to distract the party from its political objectives.
Olawoye said: “Now that we have a big election coming up that concerns the President of this country, we must not give room for anything to disunite us, to set us apart. Our goal now, our target, is that Tinubu must win.”
The counsel to the claimants, Olaoluwa Imoru, explained after the sitting that the suit was founded on an alleged libellous publication authored, signed and caused to be published by the 35th defendant in the Nigerian Tribune newspaper of February 2, 2026.
Consequently, he said the claimants were seeking declarations that the publication was “extremely defamatory,” “disparaging” and “needless,” in addition to aggravated, special and general damages over the alleged injury to their reputation.
Imoru further said the claimants were demanding a retraction and apology, stressing that “nothing short of a letter of retraction and an apology will be acceptable.”
One of the expressions considered defamatory, according to the counsel to the claimants, was the reference to the first claimant as the governor’s “mummy”, which he argued allegedly created the impression that she exercised undue authority or influence over Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa.
Imoru said, “We are saying, invariably, that this person exercised a kind of authority or power on His Excellency, the governor. And that is not the case here. She is an appointee of the governor. She is subservient to the governor, she is answerable to the governor and not the other way around.”
He insisted that the claimants had chosen to seek redress through the court rather than resort to self-help, saying that the alleged publication had injured their reputation.
The presiding judge, Justice Yemi Fasanmi, adjourned the matter to October 8, 2026 for further proceedings.
