A photojournalist, Mr. Babatunde Ogundeji, has sued the Nigerian Railway Corporation at the Federal High Court Ikeja for the assault he suffered at the terminus office in Ikeja, Lagos on August 13, 2012.
Fifty-year-old Ogundeji, a freelance journalist, alleged that he was beaten up, battered and wounded by “servants, agents and privies” of the corporation while taking the photographs of passengers atop and hanging on to an upcoming train.
He filed the suit through his counsel, a civil rights lawyer, Mr. Jiti Ogunye.
Ogundeji, a member of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Lagos State Council, filed the suit dated June 13, 2013 seeking N50m as damages for the “assault, beating, battery, wounding and inflicting of bodily injury”.
His statement of claim read in part, “The applicant’s assailants who were employees, agents, servants and privies of the respondent and passengers conveyed by the respondent’s train then seized the applicant’s camera from his colleague.”
The photojournalist claimed he almost lost his life in the incident.
He said the Divisional Police Officer of the Railway Police Station, Agege, Lagos and the Station Manager, eventually released the camera to him “on the condition that the photographs would not be published.”
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the suit.