A Federal High Court in Lagos, South-West Nigeria, will next Monday, January 28, begin hearing on a suit urging it to order a stop to further distribution and sale of Daily Newswatch, Saturday Newswatch and Sunday Newswatch pending the determination of a suit brought before it by two directors of Newswatch magazine.

Mr. Nuhu Wada and former Education/Petroleum Minister Prof. Jibril Aminu had dragged the publisher of Newswatch Newspapers, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, and four others to court over what they called “illegal and oppressive” running of Newswatch Communications Limited where they claimed to be minority shareholders.

Others joined in the suit include Newswatch Communications Limited as 1^st respondent/defendant; Global Media Mirror Limited as 2^nd respondent/defendant; Newswatch Newspapers Limited as 4^th respondent/defendant; and Corporate Affairs Commission as 5^th respondent/defendant).

Nuhu and Aminu intheir suit claimed that the second and third respondents/defendants had “fraudulently hijacked and taken over the first respondent’s company (Newswatch Communications Limited) and had without due process and without the proper authority of the first respondent shareholders, floated the fourth respondent’s company wherein they fraudulently gave to themselves majority shares without the knowledge and consent of the petitioners or indeed the other shareholders of the first respondent.”

In the suit filed by their counsel, Adekunle Oyesanya (SAN), the duo equally alleged plans “to kill the main business of the first respondent” (Newswatch Magazine) and replace it with a daily newspaper.

According to the suit, “The petitioners in the light of the foregoing are complaining inter alia in the main suit that even as minority shareholders, the affairs of the 1^st respondent company are being conducted in a manner that is illegal and oppressive to them and in disregard of their interests and they have inter alia sought substantive reliefs including a specific relief for an order of injunction to restrain the 2^nd and 3^rd respondents by themselves by themselves, their agents, servants and/or privies however called from floating a new daily newspaper, with the name of the 1^st respondent, that is ‘Newswatch’.”

The litigants are praying the court for an interim order of interim injunction restraining the 1^st to 4^th respondents and their agents from “publishing and selling to the public a daily and weekend newspaper known as Daily Newswatch, Saturday Newswatch and Sunday Newswatch, respectively on Saturday, January 20, 2013 and continuing from Monday, February 11, 2013 as advertised on pages 1 to 4 of the National Mirror Newspaper of Tuesday, January 15, 2013 pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.

Presiding judge, Justice I. N. Buba, has ordered the respondents to be served with the motion on notice ahead of Monday’s hearing date for the petitioners to move their application.

As previously reported by News Express, Jimoh Ibrahim bought 51 per cent shares of the iconic Newswatch magazine in 2011 and unilaterally assumed control of the company in early August last year, suspending the operations of the magazine on August 7.

Newswatch’s Founding Directors have accused Ibrahim of acting unilaterally, even as he has yet to pay the agreed 510 million naira for the 51 per cent stake in Newswatch. But while Ray Ekpu and co were still blowing grammar, Ibrahim went to court and obtained an injunction against their interference in the operations of the company, which enabled him to relaunch the title as a newspaper last week Saturday.