The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon Justice Dahiru Musdapher, has been urged to disband a panel of Justices set up to review the judgement of the Court of Appeal that sacked Engr Segun Oni and upheld the election of Dr Kayode Fayemi, as Governor of Ekiti on October 15, 2010.
The call for the review of the judgement was filed by Oni, over five months after the inauguration of Dr Fayemi as Governor of Ekiti State and came up before the Ado-Ekiti Division of the Appeal Court on March 29th, 2011 .It was however adjourned indefinitely on the standpoint that the application was premature, in view of the fact that a similar complaint was pending with the Nigeria Judicial Council.
A new panel constituted by the Acting President of the Court of Appeal is set to hear the application to review the judgement of the Court of Appeal on Monday, February 27th. In a petition signed by Abdulhameed Umar, Esq, of Chief Ademuyiwa Adeniyi and Co. Law firm, dated February 20th, 2012, the petitioner urged Justice Musdapher to prevail on the Acting President of the Court of Appeal to disband the panel of Justices set to review the judgement, stressing that allowing the review would be tantamount to ridiculing the judiciary in the country. “All said, your Lordship is humbly urged to prevail on the Acting President of the Court of Appeal to disband the panel and administratively put paid to the application. This is what the interest of justice and the good image of the judiciary dictate”, the petitioner stated. The nine-page petition stated that since the National Judicial Council had absolved Justice Ayo Salami and other Justices that gave the October 15th, 2010 judgement of any misconduct or impropriety, any move by Oni for a review of the judgement was unnecessary and amount to a sheer attempt to ridicule the judicial system.
According to the petitioner, it is a settled principle of law, that a request or application to the court to review its judgement outside the narrow prism allowed by law is tantamount to asking the court to violate the Constitution which it is put in place to uphold. “It is easily discernible that the alleged complaint of Segun Oni was nothing other than a most ill-disguised, unmitigated and brazen contempt of the judicial institution of the country”, the petitioner added.
The petition reads in part: “It is beyond disputation, my Lord, that once a court delivers judgment in a matter placed before it for adjudication, such a court becomes functus officio and thus precluded from reviewing or reversing itself in the same proceedings save in clearly settled exceptional circumstances that are patently inapplicable in the instant matter. This is a trite principle of law given vent to by a litany of judicial authorities among which is the decision handed down by the Supreme Court in NIGERIAN ARMY Vs IYELE reported in(2008) 12 MJSC 74 @88-89.
My Lord the C.J.N. will easily agree that the power conferred on the Court of Appeal under Order 18(4) of the Court of Appeal Rules as amended is limited to the correction of accidental slips and omissions in the Court’s judgment and does not confer jurisdiction on the court to review its judgment . The case of UMARU OMOLOWO vs AFRICAN NEWSPAPERS OF NIGERIA LTD. (1991) 8 NWLR (Pt. 209)371 at 380 is apt in this regard. “Against the tide of this well settled principle of law, the said Segun Oni has desperately been trying to bring the Nigerian Judiciary into public opprobrium and global odium in the way and manner he has been pestering for a review of the aforesaid judgment of the Court of Appeal of 15th October, 2010.
“It is easily discernible that the alleged complaint of Segun Oni was nothing other than a most ill-disguised, unmitigated and brazen contempt of the judicial institution of the country. “The exculpation of the Hon. Justice Isa Ayo Salami and their other Lordships by the National Judicial Council naturally sounded the death knell of the application for setting aside the judgment on account of the allegations investigated by the National Judicial Council and upon which the application for the review of judgment was/is predicated.
“It is a matter of grave concern, however, that of late, it has come to the notice of our clients that the said Segun Oni has pressured or influenced the Acting President of the Court of Appeal to constitute another Panel of Court of Appeal Justices to hear the application. Information has it that the application has been fixed for hearing on the 27th day of February, 2012.
“Your Lordship, to worsen the situation, Ekiti State is now awash with the boasting of Segun Oni and his political acolytes that everything has been perfected and that in the course of time the judgment of the Court of Appeal delivered well over one year ago will be set aside.
While it is not impossible that such boasting is a product of political shenanigan or convolution to keep a motley crowd of political hangers on, there is absolutely no basis for the Court of Appeal’s Acting President to set up a panel to hear the substance of the application after the NJC had dismissed the allegations made against Hon. Justice Isa Ayo Salami and others by Segun Oni. “The decision to constitute a new panel of Court of Appeal Justices for the purpose of hearing the application amounts, without doubt, to administratively setting aside the decision of the panel that sat in March, 2011 and ruled that the application would follow the outcome of the decision of the NJC on the petition of Segun Oni against the Justices that delivered the judgment under discourse.
“At whatever event, there is no reason to set up a different panel from the one that adjourned the application sine die in March, 2011 on the understanding that the application would be determined by the outcome of the panel set up by the National Judicial Council.
Whatever number of those Justices available now could sit to formally pronounce the verdict of striking out or dismissal of the application for review of judgment as a consequential order to the decision given in March, 2011. “One is unfortunately compelled to wonder if the setting up of a new panel of Justices is a subtle design to circumvent the decision of the panel of March, 2011 with a view to actualising the much vaunted plot and premeditated agenda to set aside the judgment of October 15, 2010 and subvert the course of justice in the dubious quest of Segun Oni and his political cronies to illegitimately railroad back into the Ekiti State Government House?
“There can be no controversy about the fact that Segun Oni has exposed the Nigerian judiciary to sufficient ridicule all because of his being a bad loser. It is high time he was called to order. The least that can be done is for the judiciary itself to put paid to his chicanery forthwith. “Your Lordship, one does not have to be a clairvoyant to see that the dimension this matter is taking signposts an avoidable potential tragedy for the judiciary in this country. It is a cardinal principle of our judicial system that there should be an end to litigation.
Allowing a new panel to sit over the application of Segun Oni with the possibility of giving that application a new lease of life for whatever purpose, doubtless, runs against the grain of that cardinal principle. “It is to be recalled that in the case of Ukachukwu v. Uba (2004) 10 NWLR (PT. 881) 294, an application brought for the review of the judgment of the same Court of Appeal also in respect of an election petition on ground of corruption of the Justices that gave the judgment was dismissed on the ground that the judgment could not be revisited. Interestingly enough, that was a case in which two of the Justices that gave the judgment had been found guilty of financial misconduct and dismissed.
In our own case, their Lordships that gave the judgment were exonerated on the accusations against them. “The relevant issue here is that with the benefit of such a precedent in our jurisprudence, there is absolutely no reason why the Acting President of the Court of Appeal should dignify the application of Segun Oni with any hearing by a new Panel of Justices.
If anything, he should have just been administratively communicated that with the dismissal of his petition by the National Judicial Council, the bottom had been knocked from the application in Court. That would have been in tandem with the decision reached by the Panel that adjourned the application sine die in March, 2011. “Significantly, your Lordship avowed a desire to salvage the judiciary from the precipice when your Lordship assumed the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria.
This case offers a litmus test of that avowal. The decision of the Acting President of the Court of Appeal to set up a new panel to hear a most frivolous and vexatious application is a metaphor for an ill wind that can never blow the Nigerian Judiciary, nay the entire polity, any good. “It is, however, reassuring that your Lordship lately admirably and dutifully intervened to nip in the bud a similar attempt to besmear the judiciary in the case of Uba v. Nzeribe.
With due respect, there is a clarion call on your Lordship to do an encore of that noble effort in respect of this matter. “All said, your Lordship is humbly urged to prevail on the Acting President of the Court of Appeal to disband the panel and administratively put paid to the application. This is what the interest of justice and the good image of the judiciary dictate.”
Last modified: February 23, 2012