Admiral Murtala Nyako V. Adamawa State House Of Assembly & Ors (2016)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

MUSA DATTIJO MUHAMMAD, J.S.C.

The appellant, Admiral Murtala Nyako, a retired naval officer, was elected the Governor of Adamawa State on the 5th of February 2012 to serve for a term of four years from the date he subscribed to the oath of the office. On the basis of its allegation of misconduct against the appellant, the 1st respondent following a resolution it passed, commenced the process of appellant’s removal from the office of the Governor of Adamawa State he was elected to.

Aggrieved by 1st respondent’s failure to follow the laid down procedure prescribed by the Constitution for the removal of a Governor, the appellant, by an originating motion filed on 13th November 2014, challenged his purported impeachment by the 1st respondent and sought for his reinstatement at the Federal High Court sitting at Yola, hereinafter referred to as the trial Court.

1st respondent not only challenged the competence of the originating motion by way of preliminary objection on the grounds of the impropriety of appellant’s recourse to the fundamental rights enforcement procedure for the reliefs and its

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being an abuse of judicial process, it filed a counter-affidavit and a written address in opposition to the originating motion. Appellant’s originating motion and 1st respondent’s preliminary objection were heard together by the trial Court. In a ruling delivered on 21st May 2015, the Court adjudged appellant’s cause of action an abuse of judicial process and declined any pronouncement on the merit of same notwithstanding the availability of materials in support of the respective positions of the parties.

Dissatisfied with the trial Court’s ruling, the appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal, holden at Yola, hereinafter referred to as the lower Court, by which judgment of 11th February 2016, appellant’s appeal was allowed in part. The Court set aside the trial Court’s ruling, invoked Section 15 of Court of Appeal Act to consider and determine the merit of appellant’s originating motion and granted him reliefs 1 5 thereof. The 6th relief that had been abandoned by appellant’s counsel in the course of arguing the appeal was, struck out

Aggrieved by the lower Court’s order striking out his 6th relief, the appellant has appealed to this Court on a

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notice containing three grounds.

Parties have settled and exchanged their briefs of arguments, including appellant’s reply briefs and, at the hearing of the appeal, adopted same in prosecution or opposition of the appeal.

The sole issue distilled by the appellant at Paragraph 3 of his brief reads:-

“Whether upon declaring his purported removal from office as Governor of Adamawa State unconstitutional, null and void, the Court below was not under a legal duty to reinstate the Appellant”

The issue formulated in the 1st respondent’s brief as arising for the determination of the appeal reads:-