By Yusuf Boluwatife
Former minister of aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode has asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to dismiss the N800million suit that was instituted against him by his disgruntled ex-wife, Ms. Precious Chikwendu.
Recall that the crisis rocking the ex-minister’s marriage had made headlines after his wife accused him of trampling on her human rights by denying her access to their children.
Precious had called out her ex-husband on her Instagram page and even gotten support from Nigerians on Twitter.
Accordingly, she filed a suit against him, through her team of lawyers, asking the court to hinder her former husband from using the other respondents to intimidate or harras her in any form whatsoever, pending the hearing and determination of an earlier suit marked No CV/372/2021, which she filed to take custody of the four children she bore for her ex-husband.
The team led by Mr Abdul-Aziz Jimoh, stated that the Inspector General of Police, Deputy Inspector General of Police, Force CID, Commissioner of Police FCT, and the OC Legal (CID) FCT Command, CSP James were respondents in the matter.
However, Fani-Kayode, in a 23-paragraph affidavit, filed through his team of lawyers, personally dismissed the suit.
According to the ex-minister, it was not true that the applicant, Ms Chikwendu was forcefully separated from her children.
He told the court that instead “she elected to leave her matrimonial home and consciously abandon the children, in order to optimize without restraints, her extra-marital and inordinate sexual escapades.”
Fani-Kayode stated further: “As a fact, it is not surprising that Ms. Precious Chikwendu is capable of such reckless abandonment, because: whilst she was with me in the house afore-described, she employed 12 in-house nannies to cater for the children, excluding supervisors and nurses who equally attend to them; the Applicant did not at any time extend maternal care to the children, for the reason that she had a medical condition which deprived her of any filial bond with them; she deprived the children of the natural sucks or breast milk, also on account of the need to preserve her body shape, coupled with a contrived medical condition which she claimed would not permit her to breastfeed them.”
According to him, “Despite the level of the Applicant’s brazen amoral acts, several entities had been made to her, in returning home or visiting the children, but she completely refused all.
“In a recent letter which was written to her Solicitor handling the matrimonial case, his attention was drawn to the fact that there has been no time that the Applicant was deprived physical access to her children, in as much as she has been speaking to them on phone and doing video calls with them.
“The Applicant only plays the victim and cries foul of deprivation of access or separation from her children, when indeed, she does not deeply desire to be with them.”
Consequently, he urged the court to disregard the suit for lacking in merit, as well as for constituting an abuse of judicial process.
He maintained that the affidavit the Applicant filed against him before the court contained “concocted facts, presented by subterfuge, in order to mislead the Court and frustrate the administration of justice”.
“I know that the instant suit is nothing but a smokescreen intended to avoid the longs arms of justice and to malign me.
“There is no merit whatsoever in this suit, which was filed in abuse of court and judicial process.It is in the interest of justice to dismiss this suit for lacking in merit.
“I conscientiously depose to this counter-affidavit from facts within my personal knowledge, and in good faith, believing same to be in accordance with the Oaths Act currently in force,” the battered former minister stated.
