Nollywood actress Adunni Ade has been awarded N20 million in damages by a Lagos High Court after successfully suing an online news platform for publishing a false and privacy-invading report that linked her romantically to Senator Dino Melaye.
The lawsuit, marked LD/17781MFHR/2024, was filed against the 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.”
According to court filings, Adunni Ade argued that the report placed her “in a misleading and offensive light,” violating her constitutional right to privacy under Section 37 of the Nigerian Constitution and the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023.
She told the court that the publication caused her emotional and psychological distress, claiming it was intended to attract traffic and advertising revenue by exploiting her name and image without consent.
In defence, the blogger and publisher argued that Adunni had already made her personal photos public on Instagram and had waited nearly a year before initiating the suit.
However, Justice Ibironke Harrison ruled in Adunni Ade’s favour, affirming that she did not need to have personally submitted her data to the defendants for the publication to amount to a breach of privacy.
Delivering judgment on June 24, 2025, Justice Harrison awarded ₦20 million as general damages and ordered the defendants to delete and permanently remove her name and image from the article.
Legal analysts have described the verdict as a landmark ruling in Nigerian privacy law, as it formally recognised “false light” — a misleading portrayal of a person — as a valid cause of action under Nigerian jurisprudence.
In May, the actress had also threatened legal action against another blog over false reports about her marital status, saying the misuse of her name for publicity “has persisted for too long.”
Adunni Ade, who was born to a German-American mother and Nigerian father, is a single mother of two sons, Ayden Young and D’Marion Young.
