Court Grants Monarch N10.6m Damages against NNPC for Causing Road Accident
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been ordered to pay His Royal Highness, Eze Geo Anika the sum of N10.6 million in damages for causing him vehicular accident as a result of the unlawful blockage of the highway in front of its Corporate Headquarters in Abuja.
Anika’s Peugeot 406 with registration number, DP 41 EKY, was damaged in 2012 as a result of the unlawful blockage when he was still the judicial editor of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria.
Now the monarch of Ata Kingdom in the Ikeduru Local Government Area of Imo State, Anika claimed that NNPC was negligent in blocking the highway without road signs as required by law, and Justice Babatunde Quadiri agreed with him.
The court held that the claims of the plaintiff regarding the accident and the documents tendered to support his claims were not faulted by the NNPC or its witnesses.
The court discountenanced NNPC’s claim that the federal government through the National Security Adviser was responsible for the placing of the concrete barriers around the NNPC towers without road signs, the same way it rejected the claim that recklessness and speeding on the part of the plaintiff was responsible for the accident.
Justice Quadiri said “throughout the proceedings, no single witness was invited to substantiate the claim.”
He awarded N5.1m in favour of the Eze Anika as the cost of the damaged vehicle, another N5m as special damages while N500,000 was granted as the cost of litigation.
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