Former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, has joined issue at the Federal High Court, Abuja, against Precious Chikwendu, his estranged wife.
Precious had filed a fundamental rights enforcement suit at the court against Fani-Kayode, the Inspector General of Police, his officers and men, wherein, she is claiming the sum of N800 million as damages.
Other respondents are the Deputy Inspector General of Police Force CID, Commissioner of Police FCT, CSP James Idachaba OC Legal (CID) FCT Command.
The plaintiff is demanding the said amount because of the roles of the respondents in intimidating and harassing her during the pendency of her custody suit.
Specifically, Precious is asking the court to restrain the IGP and his officers and men from intimidating and harassing her in any form whatsoever pending the hearing and determination of her suit seeking the custody of her four children for Fani-Kayode.
However, in a bid to clear his name, Fani Kayode has filed a counter affidavit in opposition to the suit, and therefore has asked the court to dismiss the suit for lacking in merit as well as constituting an abuse of court process.
Fani Kayode stated that he has read the 23 paragraph supporting affidavit of Ms. Precious Chikwendu, and said, “I know that they are concocted facts, presented by subterfuge, in order to mislead the Court and frustrate the administration of justice.
“I know that the instant suit is nothing but a smoke screen intended to avoid the long arms of justice and to malign me.
“There is no merit whatsoever in this suit, which was filed in abuse of court and judicial process.
“It is in the interest of justice to dismiss this suit for lacking in merit.
“I conscientiously depose to this counter-affidavit from facts within my personal knowledge, and in good faith, believing the same to be in accordance with the Oaths Act currently in force” the embattled former minister stated.
On alleged separation from children, he stated, “Furthermore, contrary to Paragraphs 4 & 5, it is not correct that the Applicant was violently separated from her children.
“Rather, she elected to leave her matrimonial home and consciously abandon the children, in order to optimize without restraints, her extra-marital and inordinate sexual escapades”.
“As a fact, it is not surprising that Ms. Precious Chikwendu is capable of such reckless abandonment, because: whilst she was with me in the house aforedescribed, she employed 12 in-house nannies to cater for the children, excluding supervisors and nurses who equally attend to them; the Applicant did not at anytime extend maternal care to the children, for the reason that she had a medical condition which deprived her of any filial bond with them; she deprived the children of the natural sucks or breast milk, also on account of the need to preserve her body shape, coupled with a contrived medical condition which she claimed would not permit her to breast feed them”.
According to Fani-Kayode, “Despite the enormity of the Applicant’s brazen amoral acts, several entities had been made to her, in returning home or visiting the children, but she completely rebuffed all.
“In a recent letter which was written to her Solicitor handling the matrimonial case, his attention was drawn to the fact that there has been no time that the Applicant was deprived physical access to her children, in as much as she has been speaking to them on phone and doing video calls with them.”
The former minister, in his counter affidavit added that “The applicant only plays the victim and cries foul of deprivation of access or separation from her children, when indeed, she does not deeply desire to be with them.”