Dr. Olusegun Mimiko

The Court of Appeal in Benin, on Monday, concluded hearing of the protracted legal tussle between the Ondo State Governor, Chief Olusegun Agagu, and the candidate of the Labour Party in the April 2007 governorship poll in the state, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko.

The court also reserved its judgment on the case, saying that the date of the judgment would be communicated to the parties accordingly.

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Umaru Abdulahi, gave 30 minutes to each of the lead lawyers to the parties in the dispute to present their briefs.

The parties — Agagu, Mimiko, the Peoples Democratic Party, the Independent National Electoral Commission and the Police had argued their briefs in tense court proceedings that lasted three hours and 30 minutes.

After listening to the arguments, Abdullahi commended the lawyers for their industry.

But the appeal was heard by a panel that was slightly different from the one that heard the appeal which sacked former Governor Oserheimen Osunbor from office on November 11, 2008, as Abdullahi announced a reconstitution of the panel on the grounds that one of the justices would ‘soon be going’

The other members of the panel included Justices Amina Adamu-Augie, Ayo Salami, Kumai Akaahs, and Ndukwe Anyanwu.

Agagu was represented by Chief Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), who led Chief Adeniyi Akintola (SAN), Dr. Alex Izinyon (SAN), Mr. Damian Dodo (SAN) and I.A Adedipe (SAN), while a former President of the Nigeria Bar Association, Chief. Wole Olanikpeku (SAN), led Yussuf Ali (SAN), Mr. Femi Falana and others to represent Mimiko.

Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim (SAN), Mr. Joseph Daudu (SAN), and J. C. A Idachaba led the legal teams of the Peoples Democratic Party, the Independent National Electoral Commission and the Nigeria Police respectively in the epic legal battle.

Fagbemi, had urged the court to grant the appeal of Agagu against the judgment of the lower tribunal and faulted the way ballot papers purportedly used in the election were put to use by the Election Petitions Tribunal.

But Olanikpekun countered the submissions of Fagbemi, the PDP, the INEC and police and denied Fagbemi’s claims that the manner in which the ballot papers were sorted robbed his client much of his votes.

He argued further that the evidence in the case was even stronger than that of Oshiomhole, on the grounds that it was more compelling. – Punch.

Dr. Olusegun Agagu has justified the award of about N65 billion contracts for various projects by the state in the past six months. He said “it was just a coincidence that all the money were spent about the same time”.

After the judgment of the Garba Nabaruma-led election petition tribunal of July 25 last year in which the April 14, 2007 election of Agagu was voided and the petitioner, Olusegun Mimiko, of the Labour Party (LP) declared as the winner, contracts worth N65 billion had been awarded by the state government.

The appeal filed by Agagu and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) against the tribunal verdict is now before the Appeal Court in Benin, Edo State.

Covering all sectors such as education, health, road construction and provision of infrastructure, the state government in the awards of the projects, which include the N14.4 billion renovation of the multi-billion naira Owena Multi-Purpose Dam, always concretised the deal with immediate payment of 50 per cent mobilisation fee at the award ceremonies.

Described as unprecedented in the history of the state by Agagu’s critics, the opposition in particular accused the state government of deliberately spending money and committing the state to some nonviable projects.

-Nigerian Guardian.

The Labour Party in Ondo State has criticised Governor Olusegun Agagu-led administration over what it called frivolous award of contracts.

The party, in a statement made available to our correspondent in Akure on Sunday by its Director of Press, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi, said that the governor had awarded N65bn contracts since July 25 when Justice Garba Nabaruma nullified his election.

The party’s spokesman said that Agagu’s action was aimed at ensuring that Dr. Olusegun Mimiko of the LP who was declared the validly elected governor of the state met empty treasury when he assumed office.

Olabisi said, “Only last week, Agagu, who claimed to have spent over N15bn on provision of non-existent water, awarded another whopping N14.5bn contract for the Owena Multipurpose Dam which is a Federal Government project. This is aside from over N7bn Agagu claimed to have expended on the same dam by his government since 2003.”

“In Akure, the state capital, Agagu awarded a road which is less than 2-kilometres and with not a single culvert bridge and on high ground for a whopping N1.5bn Almost on a daily basis now.”

But the Chief of Staff to the Governor, Mr. Femi Agagu, described the LP’s allegation as an idle talk. He added that all contracts awarded were in the 2008 budget.

Agagu said that the contracts awarded were people oriented ones which would positively affect the lives of the people of the state.

According to him, the government decided to complete the Owena Multipurpose Dam which was a Federal Government initiated project with that amount in order to boost water supply to six local government areas in the state.

He said, “Despite the tribunal’s judgment, Dr. Agagu remains committed to his promise to harness the resources of the state to develop the land and its people and as well change it to a technologically-driven economy.

The Appeal Court yesterday fixed January 19 and 20, 2009 for hearing of the appeal filed by the Ondo State Governor Olusegun Agagu against the Labour Party (LP) and its candidate Dr. Olusegun Mimiko.

The Court of Appeal sitting in Benin, Edo State, has fixed November 10 for hearing of petitions on the Ondo State governorship.

The News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN ) quoted the chairman of the panel of judges, Justice Umaru Adbullahi, as saying on Monday that all the petitions regarding the governorship election in the state would be determined together.

THE House of Representatives Committee on Power, which probed the Federal Government’s handling of the sector between 1999 and 2007, has recommended the interrogation of former and serving public officials by the country’s anti-graft agencies.

Among those the panel asked the House to recommend to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for investigation are former President Olusegun Obasanjo; Governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Agagu; the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The committee believes that the intervention of the EFCC in the matter would enable the indicted officials and institutions to account for their roles in the award and execution of multi-billion naira contracts for the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPPs).

The panel, headed by Ndudu Godwin Elumelu, also recommended the redeployment of the Minister of State for Energy, Hajia Fatima Balarabe Ibrahim.

Agagu, a former Minister of Power and Steel, allegedly awarded contracts to non-existing firms. The panel said that Agagu’s explanation on the issue was unsatisfactory.

The panel said that the indicted persons, if found guilty, should be barred from holding any public office in the future.

The 10-volume report submitted by the Elumelu committee said Ibrahim should be redeployed from the ministry to another place where she might be better fitted. Also, the committee proposed a mass purge in the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to enhance its performance. All the projects should be reviewed, the panel stated.

The report said: “The committee found out that during the tenure of Dr. Olusegun Agagu as Minister of Power and Steel, numerous contracts were awarded. Relying on a letter from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) at the time of Agagu’s tenure as minister, in 2002, the committee found out that some unregistered companies were awarded huge contracts. In his testimony, he said that it was not his duty to verify the legal status of companies that were awarded contracts by the Federal Ministry of Power and Steel under his watch. Consequently, there is a prima facie evidence that Agagu awarded contracts without due process. Up till the time of this report, all efforts to get the owners of the companies to appear in person before the committee proved abortive. Rather, the committee received some documents containing reports that the companies were registered. The true identifies of the owners remained unresolved.”

“In view of the huge amounts involved, the committee recommends that EFCC and ICPC should investigate the allegations with a view to prosecuting any one found culpable.”

By Justice Oluwadare Aguda

It is perhaps not generally appreciated that the ability of the courts of law to ensure peace and order in society derives largely from the respect they are customarily given and the awe in which they are held by the people.

When the courts and the Judges are stripped of their traditional respect and awe, people will begin to deny obedience to court orders; and when obedience is denied to the orders of the courts to any considerable extent, affairs in society will tend to be controlled by the powerful and ruthless. And now that the leaders wantonly accuse Judges of bias, partisanship and corruption, ordinary folk, taking their cue from their leaders, will soon start to believe that the Judges do not deserve to be obeyed. They will regard the courts, and the law itself, with contempt.

The focus of this article is the attacks on Election Petitions tribunals and the Judges who sit on them. These tribunals are set up by virtue of subsections (1) and (2) of section 285 of the Constitution. They have the status of courts of law and as such are entitled to be accorded the same respect as is given to any court of law. Nigerian politicians are now systematically stripping the law courts of their traditional awe and respect as some wage all-out wars on the courts when judgments do not go in their favour. And these are highly placed leaders who enjoy the unquestioning following of millions of people.

In the wake of the nullification on July 25, 2008 of the election of Governor Olusegun Agagu of Ondo State, it was reported that busloads of supporters of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came to the State capital, Akure, from the six local government areas of the State where election results were nullified to protest against the verdict of the Ondo State Election Petition Tribunal.

An odious example of the kind of attacks on the integrity of Judges we are talking about is provided by an advertorial made in a newspaper by a group calling itself “Association of Young Professionals (AYP), Ondo State Chapter”… Titled: Election Petitions Tribunal Judgment in Ondo State: An arrest of Justice, the advertorial declared: “…we consider it absolutely necessary, as stakeholders, to encounter, open up and engage the moral issues in the judgment in order to distill Ondo State from the froth of judicial poison and social disaffection which Justice Nabaruma’s judgment portends.”

The group went on to state: “Our intervention must be viewed as a patriotic call to resound with the force of intellect and strength of history, the symptom of the same disease and epidemic which unfortunately Justice Garba Nabaruma inflicted on the people of Anambra State in his weak and widely condemned judgment in 2004 removing Governor Chris Ngige from office as Governor. That controversial judgment virtually brought anarchy and chaos to the State. It nearly reduced the State to rubbles, putting the entire people under siege and fear. Thankfully, Dr Ngige appealed and Nabaruma’s wopt (sic) judgment was disregarded and overruled by the appeal court which upheld the legitimate election of the Governor.”

They went further still: “The truth is that the poison in Nabaruma’s latest judgment in Ondo State consists of the stealing and silencing of the people’s votes through an intricate packing, packaging and patenting of the Tribunal’s opinion in sacred voice of justice. In colour, substance, procedure and entity, the judgment is eccentric, illogical and lacks integrity.” (Nigerian Compass, August 6, 2008, p. 11)

It is necessary to comment at this point that rather than being “weak and widely condemned” and far from being “disregarded and overruled by the appeal court”, Hon Justice Garba Nabaruma was praised in glowing terms by the Court of Appeal and the judgment of his Election Petitions Tribunal was affirmed by that Court.

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Ondo State Governor-Elect, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, speaks about his mandate: “We’ll unleash the creative energy of the people to drive development in the Ondo state”.

Human rights lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), yesterday accused Governor Olusegun Agagu of Ondo State of being behind the decision of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, to withdraw the honorary doctorate degree conferred on him.

He said the alleged intervention of the governor was an abuse of office and an affront on the independence of the university.
Fawehinmi in statement said the university had recently written him a letter signed by its Registrar, Mrs. B. A. Oloketuyi, informing him of its decision to confer an honorary doctorate degree on him as a mark of honour.

He added that after acknowledging the gesture of the university, it suddenly wrote back to him, saying that “the offer had to be re-considered because, on review, it had been discovered that three eminent personalities in the legal profession were put for the award. It has therefore become imperative that we reduce the number by one.”

Noting that sources in the university fingered the governor as the brain behind the action, the Senior Advocate said the governor’s action cannot stop him from criticising his regime for its corruption and election rigging, which “has been unprecedented in the history of the elections in Nigeria”.

He said what happened in the governorship election in the state on April 14,2007 was “an abominable and despicable act of daylight electoral robbery”, noting that “justice demands that nobody should be allowed to profit from the proceeds of the such robbery.”

The legal luminary argued that the governor and government of the state do not have authority under the law establishing the university to impose on it those to be honoured.

“What the Ondo State governor and government have done in my case demeans the intellectual integrity of the university and violates the independence of the institution. It is not right for the university to succumb to the illegal, unconstitutional and immoral pressure from the governor and government of Ondo State.”

He noted that when he was awarded the same honour by the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife in December 2003, he was at the forefront of the opposition to Obasanjo’s administration, adding that he even contested the April 2003 presidential election against the former president.

“Despite all these, the Senate of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife approved the Honorary Doctorate Degree of Laws which was conferred on me on the December, 2003. Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba should have done the same by standing its ground, defending its integrity and protecting its independence,” he said.

“The barbaric action of Governor Agagu in this respect cannot stop me from continuing to criticise his regime for its corruption and election rigging, which of course has been unprecedented in the history of the elections in Nigeria. What happened in the governorship election in Ondo State on April 14,2007 was an abominable and despicable act of daylight electoral robbery. Justice demands that nobody should be allowed to profit from the proceeds of the such robbery. My support from Dr. Rahman Olusegun Mimiko is total because it is based on the truth and justice”, he railed.

LABOUR Party governorship candidate in Ondo State Dr. Olusegun Mimiko weekend disowned an advertorial entitled: “Mimiko’s Plan for Ondo State ,” by the Ondo Youth Action Group (OYAG) on how he intends to govern the state.

Dr Mimiko warned those behind the campaigns of calumny against him in the media through paid advertorials to stop such unholy venture adding that the public could not be deceived.

The advert in which a supposedly secret memo purportedly written to the governor-elect by a nameless director of strategy and planning in which he catalogued details of how monies running into some billions of naira of the state’s fund under Mimiko’s administration could be used to take care of some people’s welfare through unwholesome means was ‘leaked’ to the public.

He pointed accusing fingers at the present administration in the state and urged them to stop wasting public funds “in their bid to explain away why the Dr Agagu lost the 14-month legal battle at the tribunal.”

But the publicity secretary of the PDP in the state, Chief Yemi Adedipe said that pointing accusing finger at the government in an advert placed by people well known in the state was uncharitable on the part of the opposition. Adedipe said that the opposition party in the state is like a sinking ship and was looking for a way to smear the government.

He however noted that the people of the state knew the stuff the labour party is made of and do not attached any importance to their unfounded allegations. But Mimiko’s media assistant Kolawole Olabisi said in Akure that the adverts was paid for with state funds.

According to Mimiko, “l would not have dignified the advertorial and several ones before it with a reply, but l decided to speak up in order to put the record straight by urging the governor to be bold enough to come out in the open to criticizing him rather than using subterfuge to attack his unblemished records.

“First of all, I want to say with all sense of modesty that in all the public offices that it has pleased God to put me, as two-time health commissioner, as secretary to state government (SSG) and a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I have been above board. Therefore, the advertorial is laughable; a figment of Agagu’s imagination and it shows the stuff of the people they are made of.”

While insisting the advertorial and many like it in the recent past showed how degenerate the minds of the authors are and how desperate they have become, Mimiko noted, “As that late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo once noted, the hawk labours in the vain belief that all other creatures feed on the chick!”

Source: Vangaurd