The former governor of Rivers State governor, Peter Odili has approached the federal high court in Abuja asking it to direct the Nigeria Immigration Service and it’s Comptroller General to release his passport seized at the Nnamdi Azikwe International airport in Abuja for undisclosed reasons.
In a fundamental human rights enforcement suit, filed by Odili’s counsel, Ifedayo Adedipe he claimed that the international passport with numbers B50031305 was seized by operatives of the Immigration Service upon his return to Nigeria from the United Kingdom where he had gone for his medicals on June 20, 2021, and has since been withheld.
Odili said that on his arrival, his traveling documents were checked and given back to him but that while waiting for his luggage an official of Immigration demanded for the passport on claims of routine check which he complied with .
He, therefore, wants the court to compel the respondents to release the passport to him and issue an order of perpetual injunction restraining them from further harassing or interfering with his fundamental right to freedom of movement.
Odili, a deputy governor between 1992 and 1993 and two-term substantive governor of Rivers State between 1999 and 2007 also demanded a written apology for the embarrassment caused him by the Immigration.
In a counter-affidavit by Jimoh Adamu counsel for the Immigration Service revealed that Odili’s passport was seized because his name is on the watch list of the Economic and financial Crimes Commission, EFCC in collaborations with all the federal government security agencies and that they were only carrying out their statutory functions.
The Immigration Service claimed that the former governor was not entitled to the request presented before the court and that the suit should be dismissed for being premature.
Justice Ahmed Mohammed subsequently fixed September 28 to hear the matter.
(Editor: Ena Agbanoma)
