Follow Us on Google
From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal has granted leave to former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar III, and the Barewa Old Boys Association (BOBA) to challenge the judgment of a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in a dispute involving land in the Central Business District of Abuja.
The appellate court further dismissed the preliminary objection filed by Eagle Aluminium Industries Limited that sought to stop BOBA from filing a cross-appeal.
Barewa College, Zaria, is the premier secondary school in Northern Nigeria with an old boys’ association that includes some of the leading lights in the country, including five former Presidents and Heads of State of Nigeria.
The land, which was in the trust of the General Gowon-led Board of Trustees, was sometime in 2007 reallocated to Haida Properties that year. Two years later, that is in 2009, the same plot of land was reallocated to Eagle Aluminium, belonging to Mr Linus Ukachukwu, unknown to the Board of Trustees of BOBA.
In a unanimous ruling, a three-member panel of the appellate court held that the objection of Eagle Aluminium was an abuse of court process, pre-emptive, and presumptuous as it was against the rules of the court.
Other News
Justice Peter Chudi Obiorah, who delivered the ruling, held: “There is no provision in the Court of Appeal Rules, 2021, where a party served with a motion on notice and who wishes to oppose the application is permitted to do so by the filing of preliminary objection. Parties are not allowed to invent their own rules at their whims and caprice.”
The ruling was endorsed by Justice Hamma Akawu Barka and Justice Ishaq Mohammed Sani.
With the ruling, the alumni body will join Eagle Aluminium Ltd, as well as the Minister of the FCT and the FCTA, in challenging the December 2020 judgment of the FCT High Court that conferred ownership of the disputed 6,500-square-metre land on Haida Properties Limited, a company in which a former minister, who is also a serving senator, is said to have substantial interest.
The Court of Appeal had earlier declined to endorse a bilateral settlement agreement reached between Eagle Aluminium and Haida Properties to jointly develop the disputed land because the settlement agreement did not include other parties in the land dispute.
The foremost alumni association, with General Yakubu Gowon, the Sultan of Sokoto, and Justice Lawal Uwais on its Board of Trustees, had also filed a petition against a lawyer, Ms Stella Oyiogu, at the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee for allegedly representing the association in court without authorisation.
The IGP has also filed criminal charges against the suspects indicted by the police investigation report on the same land deal, but the suspects are yet to be arraigned.
