Court vacates sitting order against Benue Assembly

A High Court sitting in Makurdi yesterday vacated the interim order restraining the Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly, Titus Uba, and 21 other members from holding sittings at the assembly complex.

The Chief Judge of Benue State, Justice Aondover Kaka, ruled that the interim order of August 13, this year, which restrained the use of the assembly complex played on the intelligence of an earlier order and the entire legal system and was a dent on the image of the judiciary.

A motion brought before the court by counsels to the speaker had prayed the court to set aside its earlier interim order which restrained him and the 21 others from conducting legislative business at the complex.

Justice Kaka’an held that by law the judicial arm of government could not restrain the Benue State House of Assembly from performing its legislative functions.

The Chief Judge added that the role of the judiciary was not to overheat the polity with orders capable of destabilising same, maintaining that the court should not encourage impunity in any way as he described the argument against the granting of the motion by counsel to the former speaker, Terkimbi Ikyange and seven others, Sunday Okpale, as an academic exercise.

Kaka’an said injunctive orders were not at the beck and call of the court to be shared and that claimant must earn them, therefore, he transferred the substantive case to High Court 9 to be presided over by Justice Augustine Ityonyiman for hearing and determination on November 26.