Demola Akinyemi
20 January 2008
Lagos — ONE month after Judge of Kwara State Justice Fola Gbadeyan was appointed the Acting Chief Judge, ACJ, of Kwara State, he is still being locked out of his office. Reason: His predecessor Justice Raliat Habeeb-Elelu has not vacated the office, creating what appears to be a case of two acting chief judges in one state.
Palpable tension enveloped court premises in the state when this correspondent visited the complex Friday as the staff of the state judiciary are divided by the two judges.
Controversy had trailed Elelu-Habib's appointment as the ACJ by the state government when the former chief judge, Justice Saka Yusuf, retired, last May, as Gbadeyan (now appointed), being then number two in the hierarchy, was expected to have been picked.
But the fresh appointment of Gbadeyan to the post last December appeared to imply automatic restoration of Elelu-Habib to number two position in the rank of the High Court judges in the state, a development that has now become another controversy as the newly appointed ACJ could not access his office as at the press time last Friday.
When Sunday Vanguard visited the office of Gbadeyan, he was still operating in his former office as the second in command. He was evasive on the matter.
However, a judicial officer in the state who claimed the ACJ was busy attending to official matters said he would not be able to talk on the matter again as it was being insinuated that he was sponsoring media reports on the development. "Sorry, he won't be able to attend to you because from the reports you people published there are insinuations that we are sponsoring it and it is not true. We don't want to give credence to that. So, he won't be able to talk to you again over it," the official stated.
Habib-Elelu, who was claimed to have been away before the appointment, was also in office but the secretary similarly insisted that this correspondent would not be able to see her because she was busy working. She asked me to leave my telephone number, with a promise to call me as soon as she was free but never did.
But the court chief registrar, Alh. H.S. Umar, who was shocked to have been told that Elelu-Habib was in the chief judge's office, told Sunday Vanguard that there is only one ACJ in the person of Gbadeyan, assuring that the predecessor would soon vacate the office.
"We have only one acting chief judge in the state, and he is Justice Fola Gbadeyan. Justice Elelu will soon vacate the office. She just came back from Saudi Arabia, so she must be preparing to leave the office," he explained.
Following earlier reports that she took the keys of the office away with her to Saudi Arabia, the immediate past ACJ had denied her involvement in the whole saga.
Elelu-Habib, in a one-page statement made available to newsmen, described the earlier insinuations as mere blackmail and asked that questions on the matter be directed to those charged with the duty of keeping keys to the High Court premises.
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