1 week ago
15
From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
Detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu has described the court proceedings wherein his trial was adjourned indefinitely by Justice Murtala Binta-Nyako as a nullity.
He premised his position on the grounds that having recused herself from the trial, the judge no longer possessed the requisite jurisdiction to conduct the trial.
In a statement by his lead counsel, Aloy Ejimakor, the IPOB leader argued that the Order of adjournment sine die (indefinitely) eventually made by the Judge in the midst of the impasse is also a nullity.
It is his contention that the process by which Justice Murtala-Nyako exited from the case as the trial judge was a “judicial event”, as it emanated from the court order she made on September 24, 2024.
He added that: “plain reading of the Order shows that Her Lordship graciously consented to the recusal and that alone amounts to something.”
Besides, Kanu submitted that the said Order is extant and subsisting and was never appealed. He held: “So, to this day, it remains valid in all ramifications, such that strains the legality of the hearing conducted before the same Judge today, February 10.
The detained Biafra agitator further argued that “to be sure, His Lordship cannot review, reopen or revisit the matter of her recusal because she no longer possesses the jurisdiction and she has become functus officio.
“Now, the principle of functus officio is not just a principle of procedure only. It is more of a question of jurisdiction and competence of a Court of law, such as the trial court, to give a judgment and thereafter re-visit it or conduct further post judgment proceedings. The question therefore is whether a Court can competently assume jurisdiction over a case it has concluded?”
On this, he cited a Supreme Court decision in Sanusi v. Ayoola (1992) 11/12 SCNJ 142; (1992) LPELR- 3009 (SC), wherein Justice Karibi Whyte, (of blessed memory) stated at page 19 thereof that: “There is the well settled elementary and fundamental principle of law that a Court on disposing of a cause before it renders itself functus officio. It ceases to have jurisdiction in respect of such a case. It cannot assume the status of an appellate Court over its own decision, except there is statutory power to do so.”
Aloy equally submitted that “the post-recusal Summons issued to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu that brought us to Court on February 10, 2024 cannot be blamed on the Court alone. The prosecution grandfathered it by a letter it wrote to the Court on December 5, 2024, requesting that the case be re-calendared for a hearing before Justice Murtala-Nyako.
In our reaction and after a considered view that the said Letter strained the boundaries of prosecutorial misconduct, we countered with a reply, vehemently opposing the re-calendaring the case to be heard before a Judge who is bound by an extant Order of recusal.
In our efforts to stave off what we reckoned to be burgeoning unconstitutionality that lies in sending the case back to the recused Judge, we took the responsible step of generating a Letter to the Honorable Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, requesting for transfer of the case to the Southeast.
We took this step because we were reliably informed that the “official” reason for sending the case back to the recused Judge is because no other Judge in the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court is willing to take the case.
And the reason why Southeast is in play (to the exclusion of other zones) is because, being the place where the offenses were alleged to have impact, it possesses far superior jurisdiction to every other division, including Abuja.
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