The Royal Courts of Justice has ordered journalist David Hundeyin to pay BBC reporter Charles Northcott £95,000 (N202 million) after finding him guilty of libel.
The court passed the judgment on October 8, 2024.
The complainant Mr Northcott was represented in the British court by a lawyer simply named Ms Wilson while Hundeyin was neither present nor represented in court.
Hundeyin had accused Northcott of using his position as the director of a documentary film to obtain sexual favours from Kiki Mordi who was the on-screen reporter for the BBC’s sex for grades documentary.
Court documents quoted the judge as saying: “I accept C’s evidence that D’s libel has had a very serious impact on him both professionally and personally and caused him serious harm and distress. His witness statement adopts and develops the particulars of harm pleaded in the PoC, and I accept both in their entirety.
“The court awards C £95,000 damages, including aggravated damages. This is an appropriate sum to compensate C for the damage to his reputation caused by D and to vindicate his good name; and it takes appropriate account of the distress, hurt and humiliation which D’s false and defamatory publication has caused him, as well as D’s aggravating conduct.”
It also ordered the website operators to remove the part of Hundeyin’s article which it found offensive.
In 2019, freelance journalist Ms Mordi collaborated with a team from the BBC to produce a 54-minute documentary. The documentary exposed how lecturers at certain Nigerian universities prey on vulnerable female students, such as those facing academic challenges, seeking admission, or in need of mentorship, by demanding sexual favours in exchange for academic benefits. She worked alongside Norcott and other journalists on the project.
Three years after the release of the documentary, Hundeyin published an article titled ”Journalism Career Graveyard” where he accused Norcott of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with Mordi and favoured her to work on the documentary while sidelining and deceiving Oge Obi whom Hundeyin claimed was the brain behind the BBC documentary.
In September 2022, X (formerly Twitter) went agog after Hundeyin shared the expose on his profile. The article, its associated hashtags, and tweets garnered substantive traction following Hundeyin’s post.
Northcott said the post received more than 40 million online impressions between September 27 and October 31, 2022.
“I worked with a colleague to run an analysis of the defamatory Article, and its associated hashtags and tweets by Mr Hundeyin, to see how far it had spread between 27 September and 31 October 2022. This analysis suggested the content had received more than 40 million online impressions during this period (which are calculated by tracking the total number of times the content was displayed across Twitter on users’ feeds and on search results). A large percentage of these would have been abroad, but a very significant proportion of Mr Hundeyin’s followers are in England and Wales. He was educated here, has been invited to speak publicly here … and he’s launched two books here – which are sold in British bookstores,” Northcott’s statement read.
Following the article’s publication, Hundeyin made posts where he tagged Mordi’s handle on X, daring her and others who had issues with the expose to sue him.
On October 1, 2022, he wrote on X: “Then why don’t you sue me for categorically stating that you had sex multiple times with @CNorthcott1 in the course of producing that documentary and that this formed the sole basis of your fraudulent ‘career’?…”
