Framework Energy Restricted, a native oil organization, has sued the Government Capital Domain High Court for N20 billion in penalties over reports that it was associated with the supposed importation of poor quality fuel from Malta to Nigeria.
In the lawsuits CV/3718/2024 and CV/3719/2024, the company and its CEO, Alhaji Abdulkadir Adisa Aliu, are named as the plaintiffs. They said that the reports from two news sources were bogus.
The offended parties are requesting that the court issue a request restricting the two news sources from additional distributing slanderous reports against them in a claim that was documented by their lawyer, Ahmed Raji, SAN.
The Chief of the business and the organization are suing the two media organizations for N10 billion in penalties and an extra N200 million for documenting charges.
The report named “From Russia to Malta:” is referred to in CV/3718/2024. The oil company was importing inferior petroleum products from Malta, a nation without any known oil refineries, as stated in the article titled “How Matrix Energy Imports Dirty Petrol.”
The offended parties mentioned a statement from the court that the distributions made by the litigants on August 17, 2024 are misleading, vindictive, hostile, and slanderous, dismissing the charge.
They also requested an order requiring the defendants to immediately remove or cause to be removed the libelous or defamatory language from their publications and to completely retract the libelous or defamatory language from their publications.
In a similar vein, the plaintiffs are requesting that the court direct the defendants to issue unequivocal reprimands for the publications.
As well as looking for the amount of N10 billion as harms, the offended parties likewise requested the court for a request from interminable directive limiting the respondents from additional distributing slanderous or some other disparaging words/tales about them.
The offended parties informed the court the reports distributed by the respondents “purposely, indiscreetly, purposefully and malevolently” depicted them as scheming with monetary adversaries of Nigeria to import corrupted, unacceptable/bad quality oil based commodities into the country.
It should be recalled that Matrix Oil Limited had previously denied reports linking it to the importation of gasoline from Malta to Nigeria in a statement issued by its spokesperson, Ibrahim Akinola.
