Factional National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, has described as a hoax, the interlocutory order given by Port Harcourt division of the Federal High Court to the National Caretaker Committee of the party to hold today’s National Convention.
A visibly angry Sheriff who addressed the press yesterday also called on the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and the Nigeria Judiciary Council (NJC) to look into Port Harcourt division of the judiciary to avoid judicial anarchy in the country.
“The irony of it is that (Mohammed) Liman is the most senior administrative Judge there. So, what he did before is asking another judge to repeat the same thing because he is the senior judge.
“So, this Justice Ibrahim Watila is available to be used,” he alleged. Justice Watila had, on Monday, granted the prayers of the National Convention Planning Committee to allow the convention to hold as scheduled.
The judge had noted that “the July 4, 2016 judgement of the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt recognised the May 21, 2016 National Convention which produced the National Caretaker Committee has not been appealed against or set aside, hence it behoves the court to protect that judgement.”
But Sheriff expressed shock at the ruling, observing that “all the judges in Nigeria are on annual vacation.”
According to him, the Port Harcourt High Court granted an ex parte order on Thursday and later converted it to interlocutory injunction the next day. “But let’s accept that the judge decides to do that. The life span of the ex parte motion is 14 days, which means you have time to serve the other people to respond.
“On that Thursday, the judge gave ex parte motion. The next day he converted that ex parte motion to interlocutory order. On Monday, he sat and heard the main case to give a ruling or judgement today (Tuesday) at 2p.m. without allowing us as defendants to defend ourselves.
“This morning (Tuesday), when our lawyers went to court, the judge authorised all the registry staff to run away. “It took our lawyer, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to call everybody in Nigeria that this judiciary should not be destroyed
From 9a.m. till now, they are receiving our own response to the application. “The truth about it is that the whole thing is a hoax. First, the matter is already in Abuja. Ben Obi who is also a party in Abuja left the court because they have judiciary at Federal High Court in Port Harcourt,” he added.
Sheriff lent support to the complaint by President Muhammed Buhari that the judiciary is a stumbling block to the war against corruption.
“All the problem of Nigeria are few judges in the Federal High Courts. Urgent attention needed to be taken by the Chief Justice of the Federation, Chief Judge of the Federal High Court and the Judicial Service Commission. Unless those kind of people are removed completely, Nigeria will have problem,” he stressed.
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