Salami, Appeal Court justices open up on call logs •Accuse Oni of invading their privacy •NJC probe panel adjourns in honour of CJN’s wife

EMBATTLED President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, and four other justices of the court that sat on the Ekiti State governorship appeal panel have told the National

Judicial Council (NJC) probe panel that their call logs obtained by former governor of Ekiti State, Chief Segun Oni, amounted to an invasion of their privacy.

Other justices that filed a joint defence alongside Salami before the panel are Clara Ogunbiyi; O. Ariwoola; C.C Nweze and Adamu Jauro.

They were accused by Oni and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Osun State chapter, of engaging in unethical conversation with some chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which they alleged aided the favourable judgments that the party got in both Osun and Ekiti governorship election appeals.

Records of calls between the judges on one hand and the politicians on the other were provided by the petitioners and tendered same as exhibit before the Justice Umaru Abdullahi five-man panel investigating the alleged corruption in high places in the judiciary.

Oni had alleged that the panel sacked him and enthroned Governor Kayode Fayemi due to deals allegedly cut in the course of making the recovered telephone conversations.

In their defence dated March 3, 2011, signed by all the justices, they told the panel that the petitioners violated their privacy as enshrined in Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and sought protection from the NJC in order to preserve the independence of the judicial system.They neither denied engaging the politicians mentioned in the call logs in conversation nor expressly admitted that they exchanged calls with the politicians.

According to the justices, “The said call logs offend Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which provides that ‘the privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications is hereby guaranteed and protected.”

They also labelled the call logs’ entries meaningless and useless, without commenting further on them.

Noting that the NJC had statutory responsibility to sanction erring judicial officers, the jurists also called on the council to be protective of its officers in situations like this, in order to preserve the independence of the judiciary and shield the judicial officers from attack while performing their statutory functions.

The respondents further stated that the petitions against them were vexatious and a ploy to muzzle them, adding that it was the continuation of the harassment they had suffered since they determined the Ekiti appeal in consonance with their conscience.

Meanwhile, hearing in the petitions earlier scheduled by the NJC panel for today and tomorrow was adjourned on Monday till May 18 and 19.

Though no official statement was issued on the adjournment, it was gathered that it was done to honour the memory of Victoria Mimi, the late wife of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, who was killed in a domestic accident at the weekend.

Katsina-Alu, who is also being probed over Salami’s allegation on the Sokoto State governorship appeal, was also injured in the accident.

With the panel adopting the face-to-face approach between the accusers and accused, both Oni and former governor of Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, would be confronting Salami and other justices of the Court of Appeal mentioned in the petitions on the adjourned dates.
The shift in the hearing dates had been reportedly communicated to the parties before the panel.

A predecessor of the panel chairman, Justice Mustapha Akanbi, had said he had no confidence in the panel to do justice in the Sokoto case, which was strictly between Katsina-Alu and Salami, claiming that all the panel members had one thing or the other to do with the matter.

Panel chairman and former president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Umaru Abdullahi, was the head of the court when the leadership of the court failed to constitute an appeal panel on the outcome of the Sokoto governorship election petition.

The panel is yet to react to Akanbi’s statement.