Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Mr. Femi Falana, has denied that report that he receives ₦28million from the embattling and suspended acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu, who is currently being investigated on corruption allegations by a presidential panel.
Falana, in a pre-action letter signed by his lawyer, Adeyinka Olumide-Fasuka (SAN), demanded a retraction of the claim by a newspaper that published the story that suggested that he had collected the sum of ₦28m from Magu from the allegedly siphoned from the EFCC.
In the letter titled, “Pre-action demand regarding your defamatory imputations against Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, in your online publication, titled, ‘More trouble for Magu as new facts on re-looting of recovered funds emerge’,” threatens legal action against the newspaper publication if it fails to apologise and publish a retraction of the story on its front page within 48 hours.
Olumide Fasuka in the letter stated that he received “immediate instruction” from Falana to demand that “you (the newspaper’s editor) acknowledge your wrongdoing, expressly admit that what you imputed against my client was false, and apologize for your unprofessionalism and the damage you have caused to him”
“I do hope that you will, within the next 48 hours, comply with this gentlemanly request by publication on the front page of your newspaper. Failing compliance, my instruction is to issue a Writ in the tort of defamation in order to afford you an opportunity to prove what you imputed against my client’s character,” the letter added.
However, the newspaper’s story was based on the published report by NAN, which claimed that it has obtained the final report of a prior presidential panel allegedly indicting Magu for being unable to account for the generated interest from the ₦555bn cash recovered from 2015 to 2020.
In the pre-action letter, Olumide-Fusika, state that the newspaper, by its publication “meant and intended to mean and convey” to its readership that Magu allegedly used a bureau de change operator to pass the sum of ₦28m to Falana in an alleged money laundering scheme.
The lawyer described the publication as “damning against my client because his entire career as a lawyer has been devoted to fighting human rights abuses and corruption in high and low places”.
