An Abuja-based human rights advocate and lawyer, Barr David Akatugba, has dragged the FCT Command of the Department of State Services, DSS, FCT Command and two other persons before the FCT High Court over alleged threats, harassment and abuse of power.
The suit, filed through an originating summons, also named Mike Israel Nwadiogbu and Victor Japhet Olegbunne as second and third respondents.
In the suit, Barr Akatugba is seeking the enforcement of his fundamental rights to freedom, dignity of person, personal liberty and privacy as guaranteed under Sections 34, 35, 37 and 46 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.
The applicant alleged that operatives of the DSS, acting at the instance of the second and third respondents, subjected him to repeated invitations, harrassment, threats and intimidation over a civil transaction relating to the sale of a landed property.
According to the court documents, the applicant stated that he received a series of phone calls, texts and WhatsApp messages allegedly threatening him with arrest and detention unless he made payments demanded by the other parties.
Barr Akatugba, speaking with journalists in Abuja on Thursday, asked the court to determine whether the DSS has the power to intervene in a purely civil matter by inviting, threatening and detaining a citizen in order to enforce payment or settle a private dispute, without determining the points in the matter in dispute.
“It is the law court that should decide that actions of the second and third respondents, in allegedly using the instrumentality of the DSS, amounted to an abuse of state power and a violation of his constitutional rights,” he said.
The lawyer also cited Articles 4, 5, 6 and 12 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Ratification and Enforcement Act, Cap. A9, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, as part of the legal basis for his claim.
He averred that the alleged harassment not only breached his constitutional rights but also constituted a threat to his dignity, liberty and privacy as a citizen.
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the suit. However, court documents circulated to the media indicated that the respondents have been given five working days to respond to the summons.
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