Ex-Envoy faults Geoffrey Onyeama’s appointment as minister

A former Nigerian ambassador, Lilian Onoh, on Tuesday, accused Geoffrey Onyeama of lacking the mental health to be a minister when he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the former President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime.

Mr Onyeama who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Mr Buhari from 2015 to 2023, is locked in a libel suit he filed against Ms Onoh at the Federal Capital Territory High Court at Zuba in Abuja.

Testifying via zoom from her base in the United States of America on Tuesday, Ms Onoh told the judge, Keziah Ogbonnaya, that she had warned Mr Buhari not to hire Mr Onyeama in one of her memos.

As her reason, she said she cited Mr Onyeama’s “hereditory insanity” and the corrosive effects of the psychotropic medication which had caused him to always claim he was “not aware” and which had negatively impacted Nigeria’s international relations.

Ms Onoh was led in her evidence-in-chief by Monday Ejeh, her lawyer, while she opened her defence in the libel case on Tuesday.

She said Nigeria’s secret police, the State Security Service (SSS) must have “flagged” Mr Onyeama’s suitability for the top job and his long familiar history at the Enugu Psychiatric Hospital, “but was likely over-ridden by late Mallam Abba Kyari.”

Mr Kyari who was former President Buhari’s chief of staff passed away in 2020 after he contracted the deadly coronavirus.

The deceased presidential aide was reputed to have exerted enormous influence on Mr Buhari, influencing critical government policies and actions.

Alleged corruption at foreign affairs ministry

Delving into the principal subject matter of the suit – corruption – Ms Onoh who was at different times Nigeria’s envoy to Namibia and Jamaica, said she penned several letters to Mr Buhari about the grand corruption that was taking place on Mr Onyeama’s watch as foreign affairs minister.

She pointed to at least 20 letters listed in her evidence detailing the alleged rot in the system that she alleged Mr Onyeama was complicit in.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Ms Onoh lampooned the former minister for not being aware that the embezzlement of $2.8 million by Nigerian diplomats in Jamaica in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, was not a bilateral problem with Jamaica but concerned Red Cross.

Contrary to Mr Onyeama’s testimony at the last hearing, the ex-envoy clarified Mr Onyeama was not the person who commenced investigation into the Red Cross fraud.

Rather, she said Mr Onyeama truncated probes into alleged stealing by Nigerian diplomats of donations by the Red Cross to survivors of the Jamaican earthquake.

Rather, she said Mr Onyeama truncated probes into the stealing by Nigerian diplomats of donations by the Red Cross to survivors of the Haiti earthquake.

Ms Onoh had raised the alarm that the sum of $2.8 million was being misappropriated out of the $5 million donations by the Red Cross in Nigeria to victims of the deadly 2010 Haiti earthquake was embezzled by Nigerian diplomats in Jamaica.

The Nigerian mission in Jamaica was saddled with the responsibility of applying the $5 million donations to the humanitarian disaster occasioned by the earthquake in the Caribbean country.

But when Ms Onoh was posted to Jamaica in May 2015 as Nigeria’s envoy, an investigation was launched into the alleged malfeasance.

Ms Onoh said a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Bulus Lolo, referred the fraud in Jamaica to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), but when Mr Onyeama took office as minister in November 2015, he allegedly quashed investigation into the matter.

Judge’s impartiality questioned

Before adopting her statement of defence, Ms Onoh, for the umpteenth time, asked the judge, Keziah Ogbonnaya, to recuse herself from the suit on account of alleged bias in her handling of the matter.

She referenced the 1983 precedent set by Anthony Aniogolu, a former Justice of the Supreme Court who recused himself from the election petition case between her late father, Christian Onoh, and Jim Nwobodo .

She had filed petitions before the National Judicial Council and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court, Yusuf Baba-Husseini, urging the latter to reassign the suit to another judge.

The defendant anchored her request on the relationship between Ms Ogbonnaya and Mr Onyeama, both of whom, she said, hailed from Enugu State.

At an engaging session on Tuesday, the defendant alleged the judge had exhibited brazen bias against her in favour of Mr Onyeama by refusing to hear and determine a pending request challenging the competence of the suit.

Ms Onoh said Mr Onyeama lacked the right to sue her in his private capacity, having cited only issues concerning his performance in his official capacity as foreign affairs minister in his suit.

She denied defaming Mr Onyeama as her letters bordering on the former minister’s alleged corrupt acts were addressed to then President Buhari, to whom both she and Onyeama had to report. She said the letters were acts of qualified privilege and duty.

Also, Ms Onoh argued that Mr Onyeama’s contention about a private WhatsApp message from her to him being defamatory has no legal basis.

Angry response

At the tense hearing on Tuesday, Mr Onyeama’s lawyer, Agada Elachi, said Ms Onoh was being “unruly” in her testimony, which caused her to flare up and accuse him of “dereliction of duty to his psychiatric patient.”

Neither the interjection from Mr Elachi nor Ms Onoh’s lawyer, Monday Ejeh, could douse the tense atmosphere, as she insisted on putting her defence forward in the case.

She further accused Mr Elachi of colluding with his client to perpetrate fraud by serving court documents on her through Mr Onyeama at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja.

When Mr Onyeama’s lawyers asked the judge to expedite the adoption of Ms Onoh’s filed responses in order to speed up proceedings, she strenuously objected.

She said she had a right to defend herself and since the judge had refused to hear the request for the dismissal of the case, necessitating her to defend an incompetent suit, she was entitled to take her time to defend herself properly and referenced the judge giving Onyeama four days for his testimony.

But, the judge overruled Ms Onoh, saying the defendant’s ‘Statement of Defence’, her counterclaim and her reply to Mr Onyeama’s response to her counterclaim were deemed adopted, even without her consent.

Subsequently, the judge adjourned the suit until Thursday for cross-examination.