The Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has struck out a stay of execution motion by the Federal Government not to pay N37.6 billion as compensation to Odi Community.<\/p>\n
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the court had on Feb. 18, 2013 directed government to pay the sum of N37.6 billion to Odi community in Bayelsa.<\/p>\n
The order which came in a judgment was for the money to serve as compensation for government\u2019s invasion of the area in 1999.<\/p>\n
Counsel to the federal government, Mr Michael Nomeh who stood in for Mr Ade Okeaya-Inneh, had urged the court on Wednesday to grant government\u2019s application for a stay of execution.<\/p>\n
He urged the court to grant the application pending the determination of government\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n
The counsel said the federal government was worried that if the money was released to Odi community, it would be difficult to recover it, if its\u00a0 appeal succeeds.<\/p>\n
However, counsel to Odi community, Mr Lawal Rabana, urged the court to throw away federal government\u2019s application because Odi people were entitled to the compensation.<\/p>\n
He said government could not bring back to life those killed by the invasion of the community in December 1999.<\/p>\n
In his judgment, Justice Lambo Akambi, struck out government\u2019s application, saying it was frivolous and lacked merit.<\/p>\n
He said the application was not in good faith because government had assets worth more than N37.6 billion.<\/p>\n
Akambi said granting government\u2019s request would mean a denial of justice to the community because it took the community over a decade to get justice.<\/p>\n
He also said many of the community\u2019s people lost their lives during the invasion.<\/p>\n
The judge said further that government\u2019s fears that if its appeal succeeds it would be difficult to retrieve the money from Odi was baseless.<\/p>\n
“This is because people cannot wait forever to get justice,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has struck out a stay of execution motion by the Federal Government not to pay N37.6 billion as compensation to Odi Community.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n