The staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited have demanded that Justice Charles Agbaza of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) recuse himself from a case over the leadership in the NNPC Staff Multipurpose Cooperative Society.
The request is contained in an application filed by 15 members of the cooperative society through their lawyer, Ibrahim Idris (SAN).
On Thursday, Idris informed the court about the application filed by his clients when the case, marked: FCTHC/ABJ/CV/2640/2024 came up.
The applicants are requesting that the judge step down from the case because they did not feel that he could settle the leadership issue in an unbiased manner.
They said the judge’s bias against them was evident in some of the interim orders he issued in the case.
“I have lost total and complete faith and confidence in the ability of the presiding judge in this matter to continue to entertain this suit and serve justice without bias,” stated the applicants, who are defendants in the substantive suit.
“The conduct of the presiding judge during the hearing of this suit, and particularly judging from the nature of the orders of the presiding judge so far in the suit, it only points to one impeachable conclusion that the defendants are not likely to access justice in this honourable court hence the request that the presiding judge recuse himself from further presiding over this suit.”
The applicants added the court had on October 3, while there was a contention between two lawyers over who was validly briefed to represent the Cooperative Society (16th defendant), ordered one Mr. Lekan Ogunbayo to appear to clarify who he had instructed as the President of the Management Committee of the Cooperative, to defend it in the matter.
The said: “The fulcrum of the substantive suit principally revolves around whether the tenure of the Management Committee led by Mr. Ogunbayo (which had been removed by the Congress of the Association as at then) was subsisting.
“The status quo ante bellum was that an interim Management Committee led by the 2nd and 3rd defendants as the President and Secretary, respectively, had been appointed by the Congress of the 16th defendant and indeed, had been performing the functions of their offices, hence the challenge of the said decision by Claimants before this honourable court.
“The decision of the court ordering the appearance of the said Mr. Ogunbayo in the circumstance, had prejudged the suit at the interlocutory stage.
“Furthermore, the order made by the court on 10th October 2024, directing that the interim order of injunction made on the 30th of May, 2024, shall abide pending the hearing of the consolidated applications and substantive suit without hearing the defendants on whether or not it is suitable to grant an injunction in the circumstance, amounts to a denial of fair hearing of the defendants.
“The decision of the honourable court to extend the interim order of injunction in the circumstance without hearing the other side amounts to a perversion of justice,” the applicants said.
George Ibrahim (SAN), the plaintiffs’ attorney, announced his plan to drop a contempt charge his clients had brought against Mrs. Fatima Yakubu, the director of the NNPCL’s human resources department, for allegedly disobeying the court’s earlier interim orders in the case.
In his decision, Justice Agbaza acknowledged receiving the application and postponed it until November 8 in order to consider all of the case’s outstanding applications.
Four NNPC employees who feel wronged—Eze Onwuneme, Chamberlin Ajagba, Alhaji Ibrahim Yakubu, and Bello Mohammed Garba—are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They claim to also contribute to the NNPC Multipurpose Cooperative Society.
In the main suit, Onwuneme, Ajagba, Yakubu, and Garba are among those who are questioning how the group is being governed.
Engineer Josiah Omole, Udo Iboro, Ituah Aikhena, Osondu Ibeji, Farouk Achimugu, Prince Etuwewe, Nura Bello, Michael Adejoh, Sambo Abdulaziz, and Vincent Orji are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
