Appeal Court Grants Gowon, Sultan Permission To Challenge Judgement On BOBA Land

The Court of Appeal, Abuja, has granted leave to former head of state Gen Yakubu Gowon, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saad Abubakar III, and the Barewa Old Boys Association (BOBA), to challenge the judgement of a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in a dispute involving land in the Central Business District of Abuja.

The court also dismissed Eagle Aluminium Industries Limited’s preliminary objection, which sought to prevent BOBA from filing a cross-appeal.

Barewa College, Zaria, is the premier secondary school in Northern Nigeria. Its old boys’ association includes some of the country’s leading lights, including five former presidents and heads of state.

The land, which was in the trust of the General Gowon-led Board of Trustees, was sometime in 2007 re-allocated to Haida Properties that year. Two years later, in 2009, the same plot of land was re-allocated to Eagle Aluminum, belonging to Mr Linus Ukachukwu, unknown to the board of trustees of BOBA.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-member panel of the court held that the objection of Eagle Aluminium was an abuse of the court process, pre-emptive and presumptuous, as it was against the rules of the court.

Justice Peter Chudi Obiorah, who delivered the ruling, held, “There is no provision in the Court of Appeal Rules, 2021, where a party served with a motion on notice and who wishes to oppose the application is permitted to do so by filing a preliminary objection. Parties are not allowed to invent their own rules at their whims and caprice.”

The ruling was endorsed by Justice Hamma Akawu Barka and Justice Ishaq Mohammed Sani.

With the ruling, the alumni body will join Eagle Aluminium Ltd, the minister of the FCT, and the FCTA in challenging the December 2020 judgment of the FCT High Court that conferred ownership of the disputed 6,500 square meters of land on Haida Properties Limited, a company in which a former minister who is also a serving Senator is said to have a substantial interest.

The Court of Appeal had earlier declined to endorse a bilateral settlement agreement reached between Eagle Aluminium and Haida Properties to jointly develop the dispute because the settlement agreement did not include other parties in the land dispute.

The foremost alumni association, with General Yakubu Gowon, the Sultan of Sokoto and Justice Lawal Uwais on its Board of Trustees, had also filed a petition against a lawyer, Ms Stella Oyiugo, at the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary, for allegedly representing the association in court without authorisation.

The IGP has also filed criminal charges against the suspects indicted by the police investigation report on the same land deal, but the suspects are yet to be arraigned.