Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday struck out a suit filed by one Abba Maina against the Department of State Services (DSS) in connection with Boko Haram operations.
In a judgment, Justice Inyang Ekwo ruled that the complaint seeking Marina’s release was an abuse of judicial process because a similar suit was pending before an FCT High Court.
Justice Ekwo stated that bringing different lawsuits against the same persons in different courts at the same time, even if on different grounds, amounted to an abuse of the court process.
As a result, the judge agreed with the DSS and its director-general (DG) that the fundamental rights’ action filed on November 4, 2022, before Justice A.Y. Shafa of the FCT High Court was identical to the current case marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/2090/2022.
This is clearly a situation where the applicant has fallen into the temptation of instituting different actions between the same parties simultaneously in different courts even though on different grounds.
“The applicant could have clearly avoided this situation by taking one of the options available to him by law, exhausting one remedy before going for another assuming that the next action would not be caught by the principle of res judicata.
Consequently, nothing else is worthy of any consideration where a suit is found to be an abuse of process of the court.
“It is on this premise that I make an order dismissing this case for being an abuse of process of court. This is the order of this court,” he declared.
