Ime Nya Asanga, lawyer to the General Overseer of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, Dr Daniel Olukoya, is dead.
The deceased graduated in 1985 with the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) honours degree from the University of Calabar, Cross River State.
He was the best graduating student in his set.
Before his death, Asanga was the Class President at University Law Alumni Class of 1985.
“General Legal practitioner with immense experience and expertise in litigation and strong bias for corporate practice. focus on intellectual property, contract negotiation & drafting, real estate and consulting,” his profile read on LinkedIn.
“Active interest in not-for-profit work especially in the area of scaling up leadership capacity. Presently pioneering an initiative that aims at developing, connecting and representing third sector leaders in Nigeria.”
It would be recalled that the deceased was the lawyer used by Olukoya to sue SaharaReporters and its publisher, Omoyele Sowore, for N10billion before Akwa Ibom State High Court in Uyo.
SaharaReporters had published stories involving the Mountain of Fire & Miracles Church in September 2017 when some members of the church branch in Maryland accused the Church of importing religious books without paying customs duties.
Olukoya, then in October 2018, instituted a court action against Sowore and Sahara Reporters Media Incorporated in Nigeria and US.
However, a United States district court in its judgement in 2021 ordered the General Overseer to pay $7,320 within 30 days to Sowore.
In the case with suit number 8:18-cv-02922, Theodore D. Chuang, the judge, held that “unfortunately, Olukoya’s response to the motion to compel contained a serious misrepresentation; he had not produced any documents relating to proceedings before the U.K. Charity Commission related to Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries International”.
“The conclusion is that; for the reasons set forth above, the defendants’ motion for sanctions will be granted in part and denied in part,” the court held.
“The court will enter the following sanctions against the defendants: Olukoya is prohibited from (1) making any use of any documents related to the U.K. Charity Commission that he produced to the defendants after January 2, 2021; and from (2) challenging the admissibility of these documents on any basis other than Fed. R. Evid. 401 and 403.
“Olukoya will also be required to pay the defendants’ reasonable attorney’s fees incurred in connection with his discovery failures, which total $7,320.00, within 30 days of the date of this order. Payment should be made directly to the defendants’ attorneys. These sanctions are entered against Olukoya pursuant to Rules 37(c) and 26(g).”