Aregbesola: Panel recommends sanction for Osun judge

.           She betrayed her oath of office – Speaker

SEGUN ADEYEMI, Osogbo

The House of Assembly panel which investigated the petition written against Governor Rauf Aregbesola, by Justice Folahanmi Oloyede, has recommended disciplinary action against the judge by the State Judicial Service Commission.

The Chairman of the panel, Mr. Adegboye Akintunde, who presented the report at the plenary sitting of the House of Assembly yesterday, said the allegations of corruption contained in the petition were based on rumour.

The panel stated in its report presented before the House, that the judge violated the code of conduct of judicial officers, which forbade them from coming out in public on issues.

They stated that Oloyede, being a serving judge in Osun State, was not qualified to forward the petition to the lawmakers.

Despite this, they said the House accepted the petition and acted on it, but added that the judge abandoned her petition before the panel, having failed to appear personally.

They stated that although, Mr. Lanre Ogunlesi (SAN), represented the judge before the panel, the lawyer also did not substantiate the allegations of corruption against the governor with any evidence.

The petitioner had accused the governor of corruption and called on the House of Assembly to commence impeachment process against him.

The House adopted the report following the motion seeking the adoption of same by all the lawmakers who spoke on it.

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Najeem Salaam, has said that the embattled judge betrayed the oath of her office, saying she has lost her worth to be a judge in the temple of justice in Osun.

Speaker Salaam stressed that the violation of processes and procedure as spelt out by the constitution and judicial code of conduct through her partisan and emotional disposition on the allegations raised against the government she is serving has shown her as unfit for the bench.

Besides, the house in a motion of 25 against one, moved by the Majority Leader, Mr. Timothy Owoeye and seconded by Mr. Abdulahi Ibrahim, adopted the recommendations of the seven man committee headed by Mr. Akintunde Adegboye which dismissed the petition and recommended the petitioner for sanction through the State Judicial Service Commission.

Among the adopted recommendations, the embattled Judge was found wanting of abandoning the petition for non-appearance, lack of evidence, premising her petition on rumours and hearsay.

Explaining why he allowed the petition to sail through, the Speaker noted that the state parliament under his watch elected to look into the petition in order not to gag Oloyede’s right to freedom of expression in accordance with sections 128 and 129 of the Constitution which empowered the legislature to investigate any public petition forwarded to the house, saying the issue of impeachment raised in the petition was a mere opinion of the petitioner, not the position of the law.

Salaam reiterated that the parliament was conscious of the letter and the spirit of Section 188 raised by some lawyers, but pointed out that a petition raised by the judicial officer could not have been substituted for the position of the one-third of the assembly members capable of initiating impeachment proceedings.

“We appreciate the views of the two legal luminaries who ventilated their opinions on the conduct of Justice Oloyede and the move of the parliament to tolerate the petition at all, but having found no precedence for the action of the judge, the parliament under me chose to set up the committee to investigate the content of the petition, but we are surprised that the judge lost the courage to come forward to defend the allegations levelled against the governor and his deputy, suggesting that she is not worth her onions.”

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