The rights group that once campaigned to protect Nuhu Ribadu when he was pushed out of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is now on the receiving end of the kind of state pressure it warned against, a senior Amnesty International lawyer has argued in an opinion article.
Kolawole Olaniyan, legal adviser at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, made the point in a piece titled “When the state turns the law against dissent under Tinubu’s watch.” His subject was the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, which faces a N100m defamation judgment in favour of two Department of State Services officials at a time when Ribadu serves as National Security Adviser in the same government.
Olaniyan’s central claim is one of irony. He recalled that when the Umaru Yar’Adua administration removed Ribadu as EFCC chairman and sent him on what was described as a “refresher course”, SERAP condemned the move, petitioned the United Nations and threatened legal action over his replacement. He added that after Ribadu survived assassination attempts, the group demanded an investigation and protection for his life. The removal of Ribadu began in December 2007, and Farida Waziri took over as chairman in May 2008.
The lawyer went further, writing that Ribadu became the first recipient of the Civil Society Anti-Corruption Defender Award in 2009, an initiative he said he helped establish. The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, which sat on the award jury alongside SERAP and other groups, has confirmed that Ribadu received the inaugural prize, honoured for his courage in the anti-corruption fight and for the harassment he had suffered from Nigerian authorities.
Against that background, Olaniyan turned to SERAP’s present situation. He wrote that “the same organisation that once defended Ribadu against harassment, intimidation and threats to his life is now facing similar tactics of harassment and intimidation for doing its own human rights work.” He added that “today, under Ribadu’s watch as National Security Adviser, the DSS is weaponising the judicial system against SERAP and other critics.”
The facts of the case are not in dispute. In September 2024, SERAP alleged that DSS operatives had occupied its Abuja office and demanded to see its directors, after the group called on President Bola Tinubu to investigate allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited. Two officials, Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele, then sued SERAP and its deputy director, Kolawole Oluwadare, arguing that the group’s publications falsely portrayed them as having invaded the office.
The Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja, in a judgment delivered by Justice Yusuf Halilu on 5 May 2026, found SERAP liable for defamation and awarded N100m in damages to the two officials. The court also ordered the group to publish apologies, pay N1m in litigation costs and pay 10 per cent annual interest on the damages until the judgment is satisfied.
SERAP has rejected the outcome. Through its lawyer, Tayo Oyetibo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the group filed an appeal on 8 May, describing the decision as a travesty and a miscarriage of justice, and asked the Court of Appeal to set aside the judgment and dismiss the suit. In its notice of appeal, SERAP argued that the case rested on fundamental legal and evidential errors going to jurisdiction and fairness, and contended that an action begun against a non-juristic person was defective. It also filed an application for a stay of execution, warning that enforcement could severely disrupt or shut down its operations.
The DSS, for its part, has distanced itself from the matter as an institutional action. The service said the case was not brought by the agency but by John and Ogundele in their personal capacities after they felt defamed, adding that the officers obtained approval from the Director-General before seeking redress. That position sits at the centre of the dispute, because Olaniyan’s argument treats the suit as an example of state pressure, while the agency casts it as a private claim by two aggrieved individuals.
Olaniyan placed the SERAP case alongside other disputes involving the DSS and government critics, including its challenge to Pat Utomi’s proposed shadow government and the cybercrime prosecution of Omoyele Sowore over social media comments about the President. He also cited Tinubu’s 2025 Democracy Day address, in which the President said no one should suffer injustice for writing a bad report about him or calling him names, and that democracy required tolerance for harsh words. Olaniyan argued that the statement stood in contrast to the growing use of legal and security tools against critics.
For now the judgment stands, subject to the appeal and the pending application for a stay. Until the Court of Appeal rules, the wider questions the case has raised about the space for civil society under the current administration remain open.