Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi has appealed the judgment of an Oyo State High Court, which nullified the review of the 1957 Olubadan Chieftaincy Declaration and Other Related Chieftaincy Laws in Ibadan.
The appeal, filed on Monday at the Court of Appeal‘s Ibadan Judicial Division, gave 11 grounds as basis of the request.
The governor described the judgment as clustered and a miscarriage of justice.
He insisted that the judge erred in law in several instances in the judgment.
In the appeal, Ajimobi is seeking an order setting aside the ruling and judgment, an order upholding the preliminary objections he raised against the first respondent (Senator Rashidi Ladoja) and an order dismissing the case.
An Oyo State High Court, on January 19, declared the review by the government as unconstitutional, illegal, null, void, and of no effect.
The review resulted in the installation of 21 obas by the government on August 27, at the Mapo Hall, Ibadan.
The court, headed by Justice Olajumoke Aiki, delivered judgment in the case filed by Ladoja, a former governor and the Osi Olubadan of Ibadan.
Ladoja listed Ajimobi and the chairman of the judicial commission that reviewed the declaration, Justice Akintunde Boade, as respondents.
Explaining the grounds for the appeal, Ajimobi said the “trial judge erred in law by overruling all the heads of the preliminary objections raised to the competence of the Senator Ladoja case in the process failed and refused to follow decided authorities of Appellate Courts cited before him and thereby embarked on clustered justice, which led to a miscarriage of justice against the appellant”.
He added: “The learned trial judge erred in law and totally misapprehended the facts of the matter in overruling the objection of the appellant on the inappropriateness of the originating summons proceeding in the determination of the first respondent’s case.
“The learned trial judge erred in law and gravely misdirected himself in holding that the case of the first respondent, as constituted, is not academic, hypothetical and will serve no useful purpose.
“The learned trial judge erred in law by holding, in spite of paucity of facts making any positive allegation against the appellant, that the suit discloses a reasonable or any cause of action at all.
“The learned trial judge erred in law and totally misinterpreted sections 10, 12 and 25 of the Oyo State Chiefs Law in purporting to interpret these sections he introduced extraneous provisions, which are not contained in the law, thereby excluding the general scheme and the general provisions of the law.”
Faulting the ground for the earlier judgment, which nullified the review of the 1957 chieftaincy laws, Ajimobi noted that “in the interpretation of a law, the court cannot interpret the section in isolation of each other but must interpret them holistically, while the court, in the interpreting the provisions of a statute, has no right to read into it words that are not in the statute with a view to arriving at its conclusion”.
He said: “The learned trial judge erred in law and totally misapprehended and misinterpreted the provisions of the Chiefs Law of Oyo State in coming to the conclusion and agreeing with the first respondent that only indigenes of Ibadan could be made members of the commission of enquiry set up by the governor to look into Ibadan chieftaincy stool.
“The learned trial judge erred in law and came to a wrong conclusion by holding that, the governor has no power to set up a commission of enquiry on the issues of beaded crown-wearing obas and coronet-wearing obas, contrary to the provisions of the Chiefs Laws of Oyo State, which donates such powers and authority to the governor.”
