Actress Adunni Ade has been awarded N20 million in damages by a Lagos High Court for a breach of privacy after an online platform published a report linking her to an alleged romantic relationship with Senator Dino Melaye.
The suit, marked LD/17781MFHR/2024, was filed against a news outlet and its reporter over a story published on January 18, 2023, titled “Six popular Nigerian actresses who have been accused of dating Dino Melaye.”
The case centred on what legal experts describe as a “false light” invasion of privacy, a situation where a person is portrayed in a misleading or offensive way to the public.
According to court documents, Adunni argued that the publication portrayed her “in a misleading and offensive way that mischaracterises her life” and was published “to generate web traffic and attract advertisements.”
She said the story caused her “emotional and psychological distress” and violated her constitutional right to privacy under Section 37 of the Nigerian constitution. The actress also claimed a breach of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023, over the use of her name and picture without consent.
In their defence, the blogger and publisher denied using her image for traffic, stating that she already has “over a thousand personal photos on her public Instagram profile.” They also argued that the actress waited a year after the publication before filing the lawsuit.
However, presiding judge Ibironke Harrison ruled in Adunni’s favour, holding that she did not need to have submitted her data directly to the defendants to have a valid cause of action.
In a judgment delivered on June 24, the court awarded N20 million as general damages and ordered the respondents to delete and expunge her name and picture from the publication.
The ruling also recognised “false light” as a distinct privacy violation, a decision legal observers have described as a landmark development in Nigerian privacy law.
In May, the actress had threatened legal action against another blog over false reports about her marital status, saying the exploitation of her name for publicity “has persisted for too long.”
Adunni Ade, born to a German-American mother and a Nigerian father, is a single mother of two boys, Ayden Young and D’marion Young.