Chief Judge (CJ) of the Federal High Court, Ibrahim Auta, has queried a judge of the court in the Lagos division, Okon Abang, over some of his actions and inactions during the just concluded annual vacation of the court.
Daily Independent exclusively gathered at the weekend that the development followed a query issued to Auta himself by Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Aloma Mariam Mukhtar, over the observed lapses in the judicial division.
Justice Abang sat as the vacation judge of the court during the recent annual long vacation of the court which lasted for about two months.
The action of the CJN, who is Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC), was said to have been informed by the petitions she received over the conduct of Justice Abang during the vacation.
It was also gathered that some senior brother judges were equally not happy with Justice Abang over some of his “excesses” during the vacation.
Some of the notable cases handled by Justice Abang included two separate suits filed by Union Bank against Sani Dangote, younger brother to Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote.
In the suits, which Union Bank filed against Dangote and his companies – Bulk Pack Services Limited and Dansa Foods Limited – Justice Abang had issued an interim order freezing the accounts of the defendants in 20 commercial banks.
Union Bank had filed the suit against Dangote and his companies over alleged failure to liquidate about N5 billion debt despite repeated demands.
The order has since been challenged at the Court of Appeal in Lagos.
In one of the proceedings in the suit, Justice Abang had allegedly behaved unruly to two senior counsel handling the matter.
Kemi Phinero represented Union Bank, while Ricky Tarfa represented the defendants.
Both Phinero and Tarfa are Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs).
In the said proceeding, Justice Abang refused to change an adjourned date in the matter despite the fact that both Tarfa and Phinero told the court that the date was not convenient.
Tarfa, in the proceeding, had told Justice Abang that he was to appear before the Supreme Court on the date he (Abang) imposed on them, but the judge turned down the plea for change of date.
Instead, the judge asked the senior lawyers to send their juniors to pick the new date on the next adjourned date, declining to review the date at that moment.
The judge had specifically insisted that the date was part of a bench ruling he just delivered, and that he would not shift ground on the adjourned date.
It was also alleged that Justice Abang opened trial in some cases that are before other judges during the vacation, a development which allegedly infuriated the affected judges.
Daily Independent gathered that the development caused serious hostility between the judges, as a result of which some former judges of the court, including a former CJ, had to intervene.
The former CJ, who was said to have been playing fatherly roles in the court, had to intervene to call Justice Abang to order.
Up to press time on Sunday, it was not clear if Justice Abang had answered the query, but he was seen having series of meetings with the CJ between Thursday and Friday last week.Source: Daily Independent
