A High Court in Kaduna has ordered Today Publishing Company, publishers of The Union newspaper, to pay N10 million damages to Governor Nasir El-Rufai in view of a published defamatory article.
The state high court also ordered the company to tender public apology to be published in national dailies to the governor.
The Union newspaper had, on July 2, 2015, published a frontpage story claiming that the governor declared assets worth N90 billion and 40 mansions.
However, El-Rufai sued the newspaper for publishing ‘false claims’ on his assets declaration.
Justice Mairo Muhammed, in his judgement on Monday, restrained the defendants from publishing further defamatory articles on the governor.
The court held that “The plaintiff had satisfactorily shown that he did not declare assets worth N90 billion and 40 mansions, the implication of which is that the words were false and defamatory of the plaintiff.”
El-Rufai’s counsel, AbdulHakeem Mustapha, described the verdict of court as “a well considered judgement which was replete with industry and erudition.”
The governor was quoted as saying that the “the freedom to publish is not a license to defame people or cloth rumour-mongering and malice as journalism.”
