Zainab Kassim files N100m lawsuit against Aisha Buhari

Zainab Kassim, former Special Asistant to the President on Domestic and Social Events in office of the First Lady, has filed a N100m lawsuit against Aisha Buhari, wife of the President, over her abduction, assault, dehumanisation and detention by security agents on the orders of her former boss.

A longform by ‘Fisayo Soyombo, FIJ’s Founder/Editor-in-Chief, published on Thursday had detailed how Zainab was arrested by officials of the Department of State Service (DSS) and brought before the First Lady, who personally led the assault on her.

Zainab collapsed twice during detention and was rushed to the hospital. She was also denied access to her BP meds.

Her offence, according to the First Lady, is that she deleted a post from her Instagram account after she was fired as her assistant. Zainab insists she didn’t.

Zainab had told FIJ that the First Lady hurled some of the most horrible words she’d ever heard in life at her  — words like “You’ll go to jail”, “I wish they killed you”, “I will shoot you’, “I wish they shot you and threw your body in the lagoon”, “I will kill you and nothing will happen”.

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“Aisha kept screaming ‘I will burst your stomach,” says Zainab. “At one point I said ‘you know I have high blood pressure’, but she told me ‘I don’t care’. It was later I found out that she thought I was pregnant.”

Zainab was detained in horrible conditions for four days during which she was denied access to her family, lawyers and to her medications even though she informed them that she was hypertensive. In the course of her incarceration, she fainted twice and was rushed to hospital for medical treatment. She was only released because she almost died.

Even after her release, persons acting on behalf of Aisha Buhari have continued to threaten and harass her against speaking to the media or seeking legal redress.

Following on the story by FIJ, Zainab’s lawyers, Sterling Solicitors, have filed a fundamental rights enforcement suit against Aisha Buhari, the Director-General of DSS and the Inspector-General of Police at the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja claiming as follows:

A DECLARATION that the abduction, arrest and detention of the Applicant between 18th of November, 2022 and 22nd of November, 2022, and the threat to further arrest and detain the Applicant by agents of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents on the orders and directives of the 1st Respondent, without an order of Court is unconstitutional, unlawful, illegal, null, void and constitutes a violation of her rights to personal liberty and freedom of movement

A DECLARATION that the torture, brutalization and dehumanization of the Applicant by the 1st Respondent and agents of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents, on 18th of November, 2022 is unconstitutional, unlawful, illegal and constitutes a violation of her right to dignity of human person

A DECLARATION that the threats by the agents of the 2nd and 3rd Respondents to the Applicant, of further abduction, arrest, detention and assassination of the Applicant if she brings any claims for fundamental rights enforcement against the Respondents is unconstitutional, unlawful, illegal, constitutes torture and a violation of her rights to life, fair hearing and dignity of human person

AN ORDER restraining the Respondents either by themselves or their agents or subordinates from further abducting, arresting, detaining, torturing or threatening to abduct, arrest, detain or assassinate the Applicant or otherwise violating the fundamental rights of the Applicant

AN ORDER directing the 2nd Respondent to release the Applicant’s Note 20 Ultra Mobile Phone to her immediately.

DAMAGES, jointly and severally against the Respondents, in the sum of N100,000,000.00 (One Hundred Million Naira) only.

FIJ had attempted to get the reaction of the DSS and the First Lady to its findings, but their spokesmen refrained from commenting.