Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has taken the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice over alleged violations of his fundamental rights under successive military governments in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the suit, marked ECW/CCJ/APP/30/2026 and filed in Abuja, Falana asks the court to declare his arrests, detentions, alleged abduction and movement restrictions unlawful. He is also seeking $10 million in damages for breaches of his rights to personal liberty, dignity, fair hearing, property and freedom of movement, citing the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and ECOWAS legal instruments.
According to the application, his troubles began during his National Youth Service Corps year in Oyo State between 1982 and 1983, when he defended University of Ibadan students charged with conspiracy and attempted murder. He says the students won, but NYSC authorities withheld his discharge certificate because he acted without official permission. Falana says agents of the National Security Organisation arrested him at the Lagos High Court in June 1985 and searched his chambers without a warrant, finding nothing incriminating. He says he was held for seven weeks in “dehumanising conditions” in Ikoyi and freed on August 30, 1985, after the coup that brought Ibrahim Babangida to power.
He disputes the explanation given to the Samson Uwaifo-led panel that reviewed such detentions, which linked his arrest to the defence of musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Falana notes that Isola Kanmi-Osobu, who led that defence, was never detained. He further alleges that State Security Service officials abducted him from his Lagos home around 2am on April 8, 1990, and abandoned him in a bush off the Lagos-Epe road. The agency denied involvement, he says, and the government refused an investigation. In October 1991, he says, the SSS stopped him from travelling to a human rights conference in Harare and kept his passport for six months.
The suit says Falana, Beko Ransome-Kuti and Baba Omojola were arrested on May 19, 1992, and later moved to Kuje prison, where Gani Fawehinmi joined them after seeking their release. A court ordered Falana’s freedom on June 8, 1992, but the Babangida government allegedly ignored it. The four were charged with conspiracy and treasonable felony.
Falana says he was arrested again after opposing the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, and remained detained until August 1993 despite bail orders. He cites Babangida’s 2025 memoir acknowledging Moshood Abiola’s victory as significant. The suit lists more arrests between 1994 and 1998, including a March 1998 arrest after a labour workshop.
