Fayose Versus Judiciary
A major hurdle that Fayose needs to cross currently to continue from where Governor Fayemi would stop on 16 October is the weight of the alleged attack on a judge of the High Court, lawyers and judicial workers in Ado-Ekiti on 22 September. The incident led to a round of violence which saw the destruction of property and the murder of a top member of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW, an ally of Fayose. The governor-elect has maintained his innocence and accused the APC of orchestrating such just to tarnish his image further. He even called on the National Judicial Council to probe the incident further and expose the ‘can of worms’ and propaganda that is embedded in the crisis, which had resulted in the beating up of Justice John Adeyeye by thugs allegedly loyal to the governor-elect. “What I am saying is that the NJC should launch a thorough probe of the happenings in Ekiti State judiciary and through that, the rot in the system will be exposed. A lot of things are happening there and there are signs that some judicial officers are conniving with the outgoing governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and the APC. The current crisis is an agenda of the APC and their sole aim is to try and get through the back door what the people of the state did not give them on June 21 when they voted overwhelmingly for me and the Peoples Democratic Party. I did not and cannot slap a judge.

“I cannot slap a house boy, let alone a High Court judge, and I have utmost respect for judicial officers. The media propaganda that I beat up a judge is an APC agenda to portray me in bad light, having failed to take my mandate through the back door. The Ekiti State Attorney-General, Wale Fapounda, has disclosed that he has spoken with the judge in question…where he made it clear that the news that I slapped the judge was all lies. I did not enter Justice John Adeyeye’s court because I had no business to transact there. The tribunal venue, where I went to, is quite a distance from Adeyeye’s court. Then the pertinent question is: At what point did I meet him? Is it that the judge left his courtroom with his robe to face the so-called protesters? Investigation will reveal all this. Up until now, nobody has been able to provide photo or video evidence that I slapped the judge. And the APC people should know that I will not succumb to blackmail and surrender the mandate freely given to me by the people of the state,” he explained.

Despite his defence however, he is still being held down by parties to the attack and the APC that has demanded that he be arrested. Ayodele Daramola, the state Chief Judge, recently told the NJC, in a petition dated 26 September 2014, that the governor-elect actually led the thugs to beat up the judge and that while the attack went on, the police at the scene of the incident looked the other way. He said two attacks on the court premises happened between 22 and 24 September. “On Thursday, the 25th day of September, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, the governor-elect, again led thousands of people and thugs into the premises of the High Court beating and maiming members of staff. The thugs invaded my court where I was to deliver a judgment in a land matter, tore the record books, beat court officials and vandalised the furniture in Court No. 1. The political thugs descended on Hon. Justice J. A. Adeyeye, the presiding judge in Court No. 3, beat and dragged him on the ground. The judge’s suit was also torn into shreds. I could not gain entrance into the premises of the court and had to hurriedly turn back on being alerted that I was the prime target of the hooligans,” his petition read, adding that: “The above in the main was just the beginning of what would appear to be a pre-planned long siege and onslaughts on the court and its personnel.”

Also, narrating what transpired in the first attack in a petition to the office of the Inspector-General of Police and dated 25 September, 2014, Norrison I. Quakers and M.J. Onigbanjo, both senior advocates and counsel to the claimant, said the disruption of activities in the court began at 11am when the police ordered people around to leave as tension was mounting. “Around 11:30am, we heard voices from inside the courtroom and upon looking outside the window, we discovered that a light skinned man wearing white Yoruba traditional attire whom we later learnt is one of Fayose’s right-hand men led the crowd of restive male and female hoodlums in their hundreds back into the Court’s premises and the Court room. Although the Police initially resisted; however, the crowd under the leadership of the light-skinned man prevailed due to their huge numbers.

“Subsequently, the man and a part of his crowd marched into Justice Olusegun Ogunyemi’s courtroom, where they immediately started to stir trouble by challenging the police officers on their partiality in allowing the Claimants to sit in the courtroom and not the Defendants,” they said. “The hoodlums proceeded to forcibly grab another of the Claimants’ representatives (litigant) in court, tore his clothes in the courtroom and started hitting him with fists, legs and objects with the intent of causing grievous bodily harm. The policemen in the area were helpless while we saw that the policeman who was recording while this inhumane assault was going on was subsequently assaulted and his telephone taken away from him. The litigant was thereafter dragged out of the courtroom and thrown against a locked chained glass door; which he broke through with his body to land outside.

“As their momentum increased, the mob started destroying properties and jogging round the courtroom chanting slogans such as ‘Power, Power, Power, Doro Power, Doro PDP, Fayose Ko Duro Soke, No sitting, etc.’ As the ensuing melee fast degenerated into pandemonium, we began to hear gun shots within the court premises; very close to the court room. At this juncture, people were being dragged out of the court windows by the mob, phones were being snatched and men and women alike were being frontally attacked for attempting to record the ensuing pandemonium. While the chaos persisted, the Judge, Honourable Justice Ogunyemi was holed up in his chambers, the Senior Advocates of Nigeria and legal team present, other lawyers, and few litigants were also in the court room, the rampaging mob started jogging around the court room repeating their chants ‘Power, Power, Power, Doro Power, Doro PDP, Fayose Ko Duro Soke, No sitting etc.’ and threatening to machete the judge whom they called all sorts of unprintable names. They were however prevented from carrying out their threats by the presence of some security operatives. Those remaining in the Court room, excluding the judge who was still in his chambers were subsequently ordered amidst threats to leave the Court room with the mob emphatically telling the Court’s registrars that no Court sitting will take place.”

As the resulting mayhem escalated, the Chief Judge shut judicial activities in the state while the state government imposed a curfew with Fayemi reminding the people the larger consequences of continuing with the carnage.

The NJC, while condemning the attack on the judges and those in the legal profession in the state, urged Suleiman Abba, the Inspector-General of Police, to investigate the case and prosecute the perpetrators. In further wanting Fayose arrested and prosecuted for the attack, the APC, through Lai Mohammed, its national publicity secretary, recently said since the chief judge of Ekiti has confirmed, in a petition to the NJC, that Fayose was complicit in the attack, the NJC should treat the issue expeditiously by taking a decisive action that will make it very costly for anyone to ever attack a judge again. “The need to act is urgent so that no judge gets killed simply because some powerful personality does not like his or her ruling. Had the relevant authorities acted with dispatch when another court in the same state was invaded by pro-Fayose thugs earlier the same week, the attack on Justice Adeyeye would have been averted,” the party said, recalling that “not even during the chaotic political crisis in the then Western Region, which earned it the tag ‘Wild Wild West’, were judges beaten up like Mr. Fayose and his thugs did in Ekiti. Only in Idi Amin’s Uganda can one recall, in recent memory, that this kind of attack happened. In 1972, the Ugandan Chief Justice was murdered by Idi Amin’s agents, after the then president publicly criticised the judge’s ruling…We do not want the buffoons who have found themselves in power in Ekiti and elsewhere in Nigeria to take us to those days of buffoonery, days of anarchy as witnessed in Uganda and elsewhere.”

•Mohammed: NJC should take

In response, the PDP accused Daramola of bias and pitching tent with the APC just to ensure that Fayose was not sworn in as governor. According to the party, the chief judge must face the truth and stop being biased in the interest of the sanctity of the judiciary. While the outcome of the NJC probe is eagerly being awaited by Nigerians, Fayose has maintained a reasonable level of confidence that he would be exonerated in the end.