Adegboyega Lawal, husband of Yoruba actress Lizzy Anjorin, has filed a suit at the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos against his estranged wife, Folashade Olalude, and the police.
Lawal has two children with Olalude whom he married in 2017.
The fundamental rights enforcement suit marked FHC/L/CS/1488/22 also has as defendants the assistant inspector-general of police, Zone 2, Onikan, Lagos, its officer-in-charge of the monitoring unit, and one Mrs Tina, a policewoman at zone 2.
Lawal, in the suit filed on Monday by his lawyer, M. B. Bello, asked the court for “a declaration that the continuous harassment, humiliation, spreading of falsehood, and abuse on social media against him and his family by his estranged wife, is vindictive.
He also sought “An order of injunction restraining the second and third respondents, whether by themselves, their officers, agents, servants, privies or acting through any person or persons howsoever from further harassing, humiliating, embarrassing and threatening to detain the applicant based on the false and unfounded allegations from the first respondent.”
“A sum of N5 Million and N1 million against his ex-wife and the police, respectively, on the footing of aggravated and exemplary damages for continuous harassment humiliation, spreading of falsehood, and abuse-on social media against him and his family. For the footing of aggravated and exemplary damages for his continuous invitation, harassment, intimidation and humiliation by the second to fourth respondents at the instance of the first respondent.”
But his estranged wife, Olalude, the first respondent in the suit, in her counter affidavit filed by her lawyer, Wahab Shittu, has asked the court to dismiss Lawal’s case because it seeks to truncate an ongoing police investigation against him.
She stated they were both living as husband and wife at No. 7 New Oko-Oba Road, Fagba, Lagos and that their second child was three to four months old when the applicant suddenly absconded from their marital home, abandoning her and the children without justifiable reasons in 2020.
Olalude also said he has stopped meeting his marital obligations and responsibilities, including paying the house rent, children’s school fees and maintenance allowances for the children.
She stated that she got to know subsequently that Lawal had started a relationship with Lizzy, and they both launched a vitriolic attack on her and her children on various social media platforms for the applicant to abandon his matrimonial responsibilities to her and the two children of their marriage.
She stated that the applicant, through his new wife, has issued several threats to her life on social media platforms to the extent that her life and that of her children remained threatened, and she no longer felt safe walking on the streets for fear of being attacked.
Olalude added that when the threats and attacks became unbearable, her plight got the attention of human rights activists and online social bloggers, who launched a public campaign for her protection against the unjustified attacks by the applicant and his actress wife, including their collaborators.
She also stated that she officially reported the applicant and his new wife, Lizzy, to the police at Zone 2, Onikan, Lagos Island.
Olalude also denied all the allegations Lawal made against her.
