THE Court of Appeal sitting in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, on Monday, dismissed a suit brought before it by former governor of the state, Chief Segun Oni, seeking the reversal of the October 15, 2010 judgment that removed him from office.
The five-man panel headed by Justice Tijani Abdullahi, in a unanimous verdict, dismissed the application brought by Oni through his counsel, Mr Ladi Williams (SAN), saying the application was “lacking in merit.”
The panel which also included Justice Musa Abba-Aji, Justice (Mrs) M.O. Kekere-Ekun, Justice Ismaya Mohammed and Justice R.C. Agbo, held that “if there is any case of bias, Oni and the PDP ought to have raised objection against it before the trial Appeal Court in Ilorin,” saying that the only issue for determination was whether the court could set aside the judgment and order a fresh trial or whether it had jurisdiction to entertain the case.
It also ruled that “the court could only reverse itself under the following circumstances: one, if it is misled to deliver a ruling, if a judgment is given in the absence of jurisdiction, if the case is a nullity or obnoxious, or if the court is misled to accept certain facts or evidences.”
Oni had asked the court to set aside the judgment delivered in 2010 by the Court of Appeal sitting in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, which sacked him as governor and returned Dr Kayode Fayemi as the validly elected governor of the state.
The October 15, 2010 judgment that removed Oni was delivered by a panel headed by former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami.
Oni and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), through Professor Ben Nwabueze (SAN) filed the application on March 14, 2011 at the Appeal Court in Ado- Ekiti and sought, among other reliefs, “an order setting aside the October 15, 2010 judgment delivered by the Court of Appeal in Ilorin, Kwara State.”
He also sought an order compelling the President of the Court of Appeal to set up a new appeal court panel to start the case de novo.”
The petitioner had also sought for “an order that the Speaker of the House of Assembly be allowed to act in place of the governor pending the determination of the case.”
The first and second respondents, Governor Fayemi and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) respectively, were represented by Mr John Olusola Baiyeshea (SAN), and had sought the striking out of the case as they said it had no basis.
Baiyeshea and Ekiti State chairman of the ACN, Chief Jide Awe, applauded the judgment, with Governor Fayemi saying in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Olayinka Oyebode: “We welcome the decision of the justices of the Appeal Court. It is victory for commonsense and the rule of law. But that case ought not to have come before the Lord Justices in the first place, but we thank the justices for not allowing the judiciary to be dragged through the mud.”
However, Oni, in a statement by his media aide, Mr Lere Olayinka, said he would appeal the judgment, saying the “the basis for the dismissal of the case was that we should have raised the issue before the Court of Appeal judgment of October 15, 2010.”
Oni said: “In the grounds we raised in our application, we stated that the facts which necessitated the application were not known to us until after the October 15, 2010 judgment. How then could we have raised issues that were not known to us?
“Therefore, since we have the right of appeal, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we have resolved to appeal the judgment of today at the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.”
In a related development, it took the intervention of officers and men of the Nigeria Police and State Security Service (SSS) to avert violence between supporters of the PDP and the ACN who had thronged the court vicinity to witness the judgment.
Members of the ACN, who besieged the court premises, chanting anti-PDP songs, raised tension and forced the police and the SSS personnel, who had earlier barricaded the Basiri-Fajuyi road, to fire teargas canisters to disperse the crowd.