{"id":62709,"date":"2025-03-13T14:09:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=62709"},"modified":"2025-03-13T14:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:09:16","slug":"arrest-verydarkman-now-court-orders-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/03\/13\/arrest-verydarkman-now-court-orders-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrest VeryDarkMan Now, Court Orders Police"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Patrick Idowu<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>An Abuja Chief Magistrate Court sitting in Wuse Zone 6 has issued a bench warrant for the immediate arrest of controversial social media activist, Martins Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM).<\/p>\n<p>The order, issued on Thursday by Magistrate Emmanuel Iyana, follows a criminal defamation case filed by renowned gospel singer Mercy Chinwo.<\/p>\n<p>The court directed the Nigeria Police Force and other law enforcement agencies to arrest and produce VDM in court to face the allegations leveled against him.<\/p>\n<p>VDM had been summoned to appear before the court on March 5 but failed to comply.<\/p>\n<p>His counsel, Deji Adeyanju, pleaded for more time, offering to personally present his client at the next hearing, but the magistrate refused to vacate the arrest warrant.<\/p>\n<p>The case stems from alleged defamatory statements made by VDM on social media, accusing Chinwo of misappropriating $345,000 linked to her former record label boss, Ezekiel Onyedikachukwu (Eezee Tee).<\/p>\n<p>Chinwo, insisting the claims are false and damaging, presented emails and payment receipts to refute the allegations.<\/p>\n<p>Her legal team, led by Pelumi Olajengbesi, argued that VDM&#8217;s actions violated Section 391 of the Penal Code and Section 24(1)(B) of the Cybercrime Act 2015.<\/p>\n<p>They have also filed a separate \u20a61.1 billion lawsuit at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, demanding a retraction, deletion of the alleged defamatory statements, and a public apology.<\/p>\n<p>With the court&#8217;s firm stance, all eyes are now on law enforcement to act swiftly in apprehending the social media activist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Patrick Idowu An Abuja Chief Magistrate Court sitting in Wuse Zone 6 has issued a bench warrant for the immediate arrest of controversial social media activist, Martins Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM). The order, issued on Thursday by Magistrate Emmanuel Iyana, follows a criminal defamation case filed by renowned gospel singer Mercy Chinwo. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":62710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-62709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62711,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62709\/revisions\/62711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}