SAN FRANCISCO, October 28, (THEWILL) – A Federal High Court in Abuja has refused to grant an application filed by Olukoya Ogungbeje, seeking to restrain President Muhammadu Buhari, the Department of State Service and others from re-arresting or taking any action against five of the eight judges whose houses were recently raided by the agency.
The plaintiff had filed the ex parte application following his apprehension that the judges arrested in various parts of the country between October 7 and 8 could be charged and arraigned in court any time soon.
He sought “an order of interim injunction restraining the respondents, their agents, servants, privies, men, officers or anybody deriving authority from them by whatever name called from further arresting, intimidating, arresting, inviting, seizing or taking any untoward action against the arrested and affected honourable judges and judicial officers pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit.”
Justice Gabriel Kolawole, in his ruling on Friday, said that he needed to resolve a number of issues including the locus standi of the plaintiff in an inter-party hearing before he could make a pronouncement on the prayer.
He directed that the motion on notice be served on the respondents and ordered that five of the six respondents, comprising President Buhari; Director-General of the DSS, Lawal Daura; the DSS; the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami; and the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to appear in court on November 15 to show cause why the interim restraining order against further arrest of the judges should not be granted.
The judge ordered that the plaintiff’s motion and on notice be served on the respondents and they shall be entitled to respond within seven days of being served.
THEWILL recalls that the DSS had, between October 7 and 8 arrested Justices Sylvester Ngwuta and John Okoro of the Supreme Court; Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja; Justice Muazu Pindiga of the Federal High Court, Gombe Division; a former Chief Judge of Enugu State, Justice I. A. Umezulike; the Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division, Justice Mohammed Tsamiya; and judge of the Kano State High Court, Justice Kabiru Auta.
The DSS said it recovered large sums of money in Nigerian and foreign currencies from some of the judges during the raid on the houses of the seven judicial officers.
All the seven of them had since been released on self-recognition by the DSS.
Story by Oputah David
