Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, has dragged Nigerian Irish based blogger, Esther Esabod Aboderin to court over alleged series of defamatory posts on social media.
The revered Yoruba monarch told an Irish High Court that he has been defamed by Aboderin in some video clips and other posts that have appeared on Facebook and YouTube
According to The Irish Times, Ooni, who is the spiritual leader of the Yoruba race also known as Ojaja II claims he has been wrongly and maliciously accused in the posts of committing serious criminal offences by the defendant, including being involved in land grabs, silencing journalists critical of him, human trafficking, racketeering, money laundering, and having people killed.
None of the accusations are true, Oba Ogunwusi states.
The defendant, Ms Aboderin with an address in Leixlip, Co Kildare and originally from Nigeria, told the court her blog has thirty million followers. She denied the comments are defamatory.
As a result of the posts, Oba Ogunwusi, represented by Thomas Hogan SC, sought various orders against Ms Aboderin under the 2009 Defamation Act, The Irish Times reports.
The court, however, ordered Ms Aboderin to take down all defamatory posts on social media on the revered monarch with immediate effect.
The Court orders include injunctions requiring her to take down the allegedly defamatory posts and that she, or anyone else with knowledge of the order, cease posting any more defamatory material about him.
When the matter came before Mr Justice Anthony Barr the defendant, who represented herself, consented to injunctions which will remain in place pending the full hearing of the action being made against her.
She also agreed to remove the allegedly defamatory material from her Facebook account.
The material placed on YouTube had been posted by others, she said. She told the judge she would take steps, including asking her followers, to take down the posts at issue.
Mr Hogan said his client, who is a trained chartered accountant who has worked in real estate, was selected in 2015 to be the traditional monarch and spiritual leader of the Yoruba, an ethnic group of forty four million people who mainly live in Nigeria and Benin.
Ms Aboderin is also a Yoruba woman from South-West Nigeria.
Counsel further said his client first became aware of the defendant’s posts in late May.
The contents of the posts were highly defamatory, untrue, and very damaging for his client, counsel said.
