Court Dismisses Judge’s Application to Force Osun Assembly to Impeach Aregbesola, Deputy

An Osun State High Court has dismissed a suit by Justice Olamide Oloyede seeking an order setting aside the resolution of the Osun State house of Assembly to not commence impeachment proceedings on Governor Rauf Aregbesola and his deputy, Grace Laoye-Tomori.


Moshood Adeigbe, the judge of the court in Iwo dismissed dismissed the  application for lack of jurisdiction.
Justice Oloyede had approached the court to challenge the recommendation of the Osun State House of Assembly to the National Judicial Council to sanction her after she wrote a petition to the assembly to impeach Aregbesola over the mismanagement and misappropriation of the state’s resources.

Not satisfied with the decision of the House of Aseembly, Justice Oloyede filed a motion before the court. Through her counsel,  Lekan Ogunlesi, Oloyede argued that the decision of the House was illegal.
Oloyede had also filed a motion ex-parte asking the court to grant her permission to institute a legal action against the state lawmakers over their recommendation that she should be sanctioned by the National Judicial Commission (NJC).

However, the Nation reports that the trial judge stated that respondent’s argument that she was denied fair hearing by the committee was not shown anywhere on the face the Exhibit FA1, which is the proceedings of the Ad-hoc committee, and the court could not by any stretch of imagination see how the right of fair hearing can be breached in the proceedings where a legal practitioner represented the applicant at the sitting of the Ad-hoc committee.‎

The defence counsel, Wale Afolabi, the former Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice in the state praised the court for the judgement saying justice Oloyede should not have petitioned the Governor and his deputy since she is an employee of the state government.‎
Afolabi had challenged Oloyede’s suit on the grounds that it was incompetent, having violated the provision of order 40 rule 5(5) of the state High court rules, saying an act of parliament cannot be subjected to judicial review.