A Staff of the University of Benin, Benin-City, Mr. Clifford Ogbeide has instituted a legal suit against Stanbic IBTC Plc in an Edo High Court for alleged libelous act.
The claimant in the suit filed by Mr. A.U Osunde of Olayiwola Afolabi chambers averred that the bank’s letter addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of the University with copies to the Registrar and Bursar of the institution, maliciously identified him as one of the banker’s delinquent debtors and solicited for the university authorities for assistance to recover the alleged debt was done in bad faith.
He stated that the content of letter were not only baseless, scandalous and offensive, but defamatory and constitute a figment of the bank’s warped imagination aimed at provoking a scenario of financial embarrassment for him which is he said was a gross misconduct in Public Service.
He also added that it was calculated to ridicule and lower him in the estimation of right thinking and reasonable members of the University of Benin, adding that the situation had greatly caused him malignity, damaged his reputation and occasioned an irreparable embarrassment to monumental proportion to his hard earned public image.
He therefore urged the court to declare that the contents of the letter are misleading, false, malicious and defamatory.
The claimant wants a retraction from the barn of the said letter and a public apology to be published in two national dailies and an order of award of N50million against the defendant for the said defamation.
He also want the court to grant an order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendant, its agents, privies and or servants from further publication or spreading of the said defamatory statement pertaining to the claimant.