Families of 53 deceased victims of the recent military airstrike in Kaduna State have sued the Federal Government, demanding N33 billion compensation. On December 3, over 100 people were killed in an airstrike carried out by a military aircraft at Tudun Biri village in Igabi local government area of Kaduna.

The government has since owned up to the fatal incident and sent a couple of delegations led by Vice President Kashim Shettima and the Chief of Army Staff, Taoreed Lagbaja on a visit to the community.

However, a fundamental rights enforcement suit filed at the Federal High Court in Kaduna by a representative of the victims’ families, listed the Federal Government, the Attorney-General of the Federation, and the Chief of Army Staff as defendants.

The plaintiff, Dalhatu Salihu, in the suit filed on December 8, sought an order for the enforcement of the fundamental rights to life of the airstrike victims – Sani Sulaiman, Salima Abdurrahman, Ibrahim Idris, and 50 others.

A lawyer to the plaintiff, Mukhtar Usman, predicated the suit on relevant sections of the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules 2009, the Nigerian constitution and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.

The suit urged the court to declare that the “act of striking dead by way of aerial bombardment of the deceased victims,” who were celebrating an Islamic event at their village by the military “amounts to an infringement of the deceased victims’ fundamental rights to life” as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution and international legal instruments.

The plaintiff prayed the court to declare the military airstrike “illegal, unlawful and unconstitutional.”

He asked for a N33 billion compensation against the government “to be paid to the relations of the deceased victims as exemplary damages for their arbitrary, unlawful and unconstitutional killing.”

In another prayer, the plaintiff urged the court to declare a 10 per cent interest rate per annum from the date of the delivery of the judgment until the judgment sum is fully liquidated.

He equally demanded a public apology from the government over the killings to be published in three national dailies in Nigeria.