A Lagos High Court has awarded Nollywood actress, Actress Adunni Ade N20 million in damages for a breach of privacy after an online platform published a report linking her to an alleged romantic relationship with Senator Dino Melaye.
The actress had filed a suit, marked LD/17781MFHR/2024 against a news outlet and its reporter over a story published on January 18, 2023, titled “Six popular Nigerian actresses who have been accused of dating Dino Melaye.”
According to court documents, the actress in her suit argued that the publication portrayed her “in a misleading and offensive way that mischaracterises her life” and was published “to generate web traffic and attract advertisements.”
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She said the story caused her “emotional and psychological distress” and violated her constitutional right to privacy under Section 37 of the Nigerian constitution.
The actress also claimed a breach of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023, for the unauthorized use of her name and image. In their defense, the blogger and publisher denied using her image for traffic generation, stating that she already has over a thousand personal photos on her public Instagram profile.
They also argued that the actress waited a year after the publication to file the lawsuit. However, presiding judge Ibironke Harrison ruled in favor of the actress, stating that she did not need to have submitted her personal data directly to the defendants to have a valid cause of action.
In a judgment delivered on June 24, the court awarded her N20 million in general damages and ordered the defendants to delete and remove her name and image from their publication. The ruling also recognized “false light” as a distinct privacy violation, a decision that legal observers have described as a landmark development in Nigerian privacy law.
