Ondo Court Slams ₦25m Damages on State Over Missing Infant in Juvenile Home Case

(High Court. Photo Credit: Daily Nigerian)

An Ondo State High Court sitting in Akure has ordered the state government to pay N25 million in damages to a woman, Mrs Opeyemi Adegboyega, over the disappearance of her infant son from a state-owned juvenile home.

In a judgment delivered by Justice Oluyemi Osadebay, the court held that the totality of the evidence presented by the defendants was “unbelievable, unconscionable, unsubstantiated, untrue and untenable.”

Adegboyega had sued the Ondo State Government and the Ondo State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development after her three-month-old son, Omoniyi Oluwaseun, went missing from the custody of a juvenile home in Akure where he had been placed while she underwent treatment for depression and schizophrenia at the Ondo State Neuropsychiatric Hospital.

Upon her discharge after one month of treatment, Adegboyega went to retrieve her child, only to be informed that the baby had died and that the body had been deposited at a hospital mortuary.

She subsequently visited the State Specialist Hospital, where officials told her that no child’s body had been deposited there by representatives of the Ministry of Women Affairs.

Dissatisfied with the explanation, she approached the High Court through her lawyer, Oju Kekemeke, to challenge the development.

The court found that the disappearance of her child from the juvenile home was caused by the negligent conduct of the defendants and declared that Adegboyega had suffered excruciating pain, anguish, personal loss, and psychological trauma as a result.

It ordered the defendants to pay N10 million in exemplary and aggravated damages, N15 million in general damages for the pain, trauma, and persistent shock suffered by the claimant, and N200,000 in costs, bringing the total award to N25.2 million.