The Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday adjourned a N10 billion rights suit filed by Nollywood actor Emeka Ike against Lere Olayinka, Senior Special Assistant to FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, until July 22 for further mention.
Justice Salim Ibrahim adjourned the case following an application for adjournment moved by counsel to the plaintiff, L.T. Adeh, to allow the Independent National Electoral Commission to appear in court on the next adjourned date.
When the matter was called, Adeh informed the court that the first respondent, Olayinka, had served its processes on them in response to the suit. He said he would file his response to Olayinka’s counter-affidavit between Thursday and Friday.
Adeh further told the court that though hearing notices were duly served on both respondents, the second respondent, INEC, was absent. He consequently prayed the court for an adjournment to enable the electoral body to appear.
Olayinka’s lawyer, Akpama Ekwe, did not oppose the application but told the court he was prepared to proceed with the matter.
Justice Ibrahim said he would grant a short adjournment in the interest of a fair hearing and to afford INEC an opportunity to appear before the court.
Ekwe, however, urged the court to fix the matter for hearing, arguing that INEC could not be compelled to appear. The judge maintained that the short adjournment was intended to give the commission an opportunity to participate in the proceedings.
He subsequently adjourned the case until July 22 for further mention and ordered that INEC be issued and served with hearing notice alongside all processes filed in the suit before the next adjourned date.
The Nollywood actor, who aspired to vie for the House of Representatives seat for the AMAC/Bwari Federal Constituency, Abuja, for the 2027 general elections on the platform of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, lost the bid in a primary poll.
The minister’s aide, through a post on X in May, was alleged to have mocked Ike by leaking his confidential voter registration details on social media. The post was said to have shown details of Ike’s voter registration transfer from Imo to the nation’s capital.
Olayinka was alleged to have used the screenshots, which appeared to be pulled from INEC’s restricted backend portal, to question the actor’s eligibility to contest the seat under the NDC. The post sparked outrage, with many Nigerians accusing Olayinka of gaining unauthorised access to a password-protected backend system meant only for INEC officials.
Reacting, INEC dismissed claims of a major breach or external hacking of its continuous voter registration database, attributing the unauthorised disclosure to the misuse of valid internal credentials by authorised personnel.
Ike, in the suit, asked the court to declare that Olayinka’s decision to publish his database on X without his approval amounts to a gross breach and violation of his fundamental right to privacy and the protection of personal data. He asked the court to award him N10 billion against Olayinka and INEC as aggravated and general damages for violating his fundamental right to privacy.
