By Abdulwahab Abdulah & Sunday Akano
Five months after a Lagos High Court awarded a N100 million damages against the Nigerian Navy and Rear-Admiral Harry Arogundade for assaulting Miss Uzoma Okere, the court has ordered the judgment-debtors to pay the debt into an interest-yielding account until their appeal was determined at the appellate court.

At the hearing of Arogundade’s application for a stay of execution of the judgment, before Justice Opeyemi Oke at the Ikeja High Court ,yesterday, the judge ordered them to pay the judgment debt into an interest yielding account with the First Bank to be opened by the court’s Registrar.

The Judge refused their application, saying the judgment sum must be paid while she ordered the cancellation of the publication of “unreserved apology” to the victims in The Guardian, The Nation, and ThisDay newspapers, and on the NTA, AIT, Raypower and Cool FM stations.

This, she said, is to save the judgment-debtors unnecessary expenses in case their appeal succeeds. She ruled on Navy and Arogundade’s application seeking a stay of execution of the judgment she delivered on January 27.

In her ruling, Justice Oke said a successful litigant should not be deprived of the fruits of his judgment except there are exceptional circumstances, which must be special and strong. Justice Oke noted that this was to prevent an abuse of the court process and defeat the purpose of a judgment.

“Granting a stay of execution is at the discretion of the court. Such discretion must be exercised and judiciously and judicially. The judgment creditor/applicants have not adduced any special or exceptional circumstances to warrant the grant of this application,” She held.

In her strongly worded judgment, Justice Oke held “ ruthless brutalizing” of Miss Okere and Abdulazeez by the men she described as “barbaric” was unlawful and a violation of their fundamental human rights.

The judge ordered them to offer an “unreserved apology to the victims in The Guardian, The Nation, and ThisDay newspapers, and on the NTA, AIT, Raypower and Cool FM stations within one month of the judgment.”

Four naval ratings – C.I. Jeremiah, S.A. Bullem, S.A. Kaniga and Francis Okolaogu – assaulted Miss Okere and Abdulazeez on November 5, 2008, for blocking them in traffic on Muri Okunola Street, Victoria Island, Lagos while on the convoy of the Rear Admiral.

The court noted: “Miss Okere was brutalised, beaten, pushed, pulled, dragged on the road and her blouse pulled off her by one of the naval ratings, thereby exposing her nakedness from waist up, leaving her with only the brazier. This was done to a young lady, a citizen of this country.”

The judge said the ratings ought to undergo psychiatric test to determine their sanity, adding that they apparently forgot they were not on the high sea, fighting a war but in an enlightened society.

“The averments in their counter-affidavits were cooked-up lies to the extent that they were overcooked and got burnt.”

The court resolved the issues on whether the applicants established the fact that their fundamental human rights were infringed; whether the respondents can be held liable; and whether the applicants are entitled to the reliefs sought in their favour.

She said after going through the documentary evidence before her, it was a clear case of res inter locutor (facts speak for themselves), adding that no amount of money can adequately compensate the violation of a person’s human dignity.

She held: “Miss Okere was violated by the ratings in glaring eyes of the public with her upper anatomy exposed to all sorts of eyes. Her private property became the object of a cinema for those who witnessed the unfortunate and disgraceful incident in a country like ours. This was man’s inhumanity to man.”

According to her, Miss Okere’s partial nakedness likely made “imaginations to run riot” as “most people who witnessed the incident were able to describe the size of her bra”.

The court held that Rear Admiral Arogundade was also liable and could not claim to be ignorance of what his men were doing.