{"id":68237,"date":"2025-06-16T17:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T17:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=68237"},"modified":"2025-06-16T17:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T17:09:12","slug":"court-rejects-fgs-arrest-bid-against-senator-natasha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/06\/16\/court-rejects-fgs-arrest-bid-against-senator-natasha\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Rejects FG\u2019s Arrest Bid Against Senator Natasha"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Ebere<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday rejected the Federal Government\u2019s request for an arrest warrant against suspended Kogi Central Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Muhammed Umar ruled that Akpoti-Uduaghan could not be arrested as she had not been served the defamation charge or notified of her arraignment.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecution had claimed her lawyer was served in court earlier that day, but the judge said personal service was required.<\/p>\n<p>The court granted the prosecution&#8217;s request for substituted service through her lawyer and adjourned arraignment to June 30.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Government alleges that the senator made defamatory claims during an April 3 live TV interview, accusing former Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello and Senate President Godswill Akpabio of plotting her assassination.<\/p>\n<p>She is also accused of making damaging claims about Akpabio during a private phone call, suggesting links to organ trafficking.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecution lists Bello, Akpabio, and others as witnesses.<\/p>\n<p>The FG insists the remarks were reckless and intended to harm reputations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Ebere A Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday rejected the Federal Government\u2019s request for an arrest warrant against suspended Kogi Central Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. Justice Muhammed Umar ruled that Akpoti-Uduaghan could not be arrested as she had not been served the defamation charge or notified of her arraignment. The prosecution had claimed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":67113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386,172,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68237","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68238,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68237\/revisions\/68238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}