Court Orders Immigration To Return Ex-Governor Odili’s Seized Passport

A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) to return the international passport seized from a former Rivers State Governor, Peter Odili, to him.

 

Justice Inyang Ekwo gave the order on Monday in a judgment on a fundamental rights enforcement suit by the former governor.

 

The NIS had claimed that it seized the passport on the request of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which said that Odili was on its watch list.

 

But Justice Ekwo said the seizure of Odili’s passport was unconstitutional, and that there was no legal justification for the action the NIS took against the former governor.

 

 

 

Odili, who was governor of Rivers State from 1999 to 2007, had approached the court to challenge the seizure of his international passport by the NIS.

 

 

 

In an in an eight-paragraph affidavit he personally deposed to, he told the court that his passport with number B50031305 was seized from him on June 20 by NIS officials for undisclosed reason, shortly after he landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja from the United Kingdom where he had gone for his routine medical checkup.

 

He averred that upon his arrival, his traveling documents were checked and given back to him, but while he waited for his luggage to be cleared, an Immigration official approached him and demanded for the passport on claim of routing check.

 

Odili told the court that he complied and handed his documents over to the official who went away with and failed to return it back.