{"id":77850,"date":"2025-11-01T20:40:47","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=77850"},"modified":"2025-11-01T20:40:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T20:40:47","slug":"court-arraigns-activist-over-facebook-post-against-catholic-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/11\/01\/court-arraigns-activist-over-facebook-post-against-catholic-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Arraigns Activist Over Facebook Post Against Catholic Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Samson Adeyanju<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A human rights activist, Comrade Osita Obi, has been arraigned before an Anambra State Magistrate Court over an alleged defamatory Facebook post against the Catholic Diocese of Awka.<\/p>\n<p>The case, filed by the Commissioner of Police and presided over by Magistrate E.C. Chukwu, alleges that on August 15, 2025, Obi posted comments comparing the Awka Diocese to Boko Haram and bandits, claiming it was \u201cbetter to deal with Lucifer than with the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the prosecution, led by I.J. Umeh of the State CID, the post damaged the reputation of the Church and Rev. Fr. Chudy P.S. Aguinam, exposing them to public ridicule, an offence contrary to Section 324(a) and punishable under Section 325 of the Anambra Criminal Code.<\/p>\n<p>Obi pleaded not guilty and was granted bail in the sum of \u20a6200,000 with one surety not below Grade Level 10 in the civil service.<\/p>\n<p>His lawyer, Blessing Arinze-Obi, argued that the charge was bailable and politically motivated.<\/p>\n<p>The activist told the court that his remarks stemmed from a family property dispute with the Diocese, accusing the Church of unlawfully seizing his wife\u2019s shop and goods.<\/p>\n<p>Magistrate Chukwu cautioned both parties against further inflammatory statements and adjourned the case to December 15, 2025, for trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Samson Adeyanju &nbsp; A human rights activist, Comrade Osita Obi, has been arraigned before an Anambra State Magistrate Court over an alleged defamatory Facebook post against the Catholic Diocese of Awka. The case, filed by the Commissioner of Police and presided over by Magistrate E.C. Chukwu, alleges that on August 15, 2025, Obi posted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":77851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386,172,1681],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","category-news","category-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77850","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=77850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77852,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77850\/revisions\/77852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}