Yusuf Alli, Toyin Obadina and Akin Oyedele

Our correspondents learnt of the meeting hours before an Ibadan High Court declined jurisdiction to entertain a suit by 14 members of the Assembly to stop the impeachment proceedings against the governor.

The 18 lawmakers are said to have sympathy for Chief Lamidi Adedibu who is engaged in a face-off with the governor.

A six-member delegation of Ibadan elders had on Saturday visited Obasanjo over the Oyo crisis.

A source said that although Obasanjo told the team that Ladoja must be removed from office, he could not say in concrete terms what the governor did wrong.

It was learnt that the elders decided to give the President a few days to have a second thought on the impeachment proceedings.

The source said that the elders returned to Ota on Wednesday to prevail on Obasanjo to stave off the impeachment process.

Our source said the elders also felt that the presidential intervention could assist in facilitating a truce between the two parties to the crisis.

Findings revealed that the peace initiative might have been informed by the degeneration of the political situation in the state.

Apart from the mayhem at the Assembly, the two petitions sent by the governor to the national secretariat of the Peoples Democratic Party, to nip the crisis in the bud, got missing in transit, till last Monday.

It was also revealed that the elders’ peace move was encouraged by alleged recent rapprochement between Ladoja and Adedibu.

Adedibu, according to our source gave four conditions for reconciliation with the governor.

The conditions are the release of the state chairman of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Lateef Akinsola (a.k.a. Tokyo), from detention; the release of some funds as welfare and palliative package; the allocation of two constituency projects to each of the 18 lawmakers who are against the governor; and unrestrained access to Ladoja.

Investigations further indicated that the government might have given an unspecified amount of money to Adedibu as “welfare package” in the past two weeks to appease the aggrieved PDP chieftain.

The governor also allegedly consented to the allocation of a second constituency project to each of the 18 pro-impeachment lawmakers with a proviso that the first contract should be completed.

But at 5pm on Wednesday, the bid by the 14 legislators to stop the removal of the governor on Thursday (today) suffered a setback as an Ibadan High Court said it had no jurisdiction to hear their suit.

After hearing the suit in the morning, the court deferred ruling till 6pm.

Justice Olagoke Ige, who delivered a terse ruling after listening to the arguments of counsel in the case, said that impeachment and related proceedings of the Assembly were purely political matters over which the court could not intervene.

Ige said it was clear that the jurisdiction of the court had been ousted, adding that the action of the 14 legislators was not justiciable.

“The issue of impeachment is a matter that comes within the internal affairs of the House of Assembly. The court will therefore decline jurisdiction in this matter,” he said.

Counsel to the applicants, Chief Adeniyi Akintola (SAN), had in the course of the proceedings tried to change his clients’ application by filing a fresh one.

He lamented that all the court officials expected to attend to the matter deserted their duty posts.

Akintola added that a new case had been instituted against the acting Chief Judge of the state, Justice Afolabi Adeniran, to prevent him from appointing the seven-member panel to probe the allegations of misconduct against the governor.

In the case instituted by two members of the Assembly, Hassan Ogundoke and Babatunde Olaniyan, against the CJ, they prayed the court to declare that the letter requesting Adeniran to raise the panel was unconstitutional.

They also asked for an order restraining the acting CJ and his agents from acting on the letter.

Counsel to the 18 legislators, Mr. Lekan Latinwo, had earlier brought a notice of preliminary objection challenging the jurisdiction of the court to entertain the case.

After a heated argument, the court upheld the arguments of Latinwo that the objection be heard first.

The judge argued that Section 188 (10) of the constitution ousted the jurisdiction of the court to entertain any matter relating to the proceeding of the Assembly.

He however did not award costs as prayed by the lawyers to the pro-Adedibu group.

Reacting to the ruling, Akintola said he had filed an appeal.

Security was however tight as armed policemen frisked people entering the court premises apparently to forestall a repeat of last Thursday’s mayhem at the city.

However, hundreds of market women besieged the Olubadan of Ibadan’s palace on Wednesday to drum support for Ladoja.

Prince Jide Ogundipe, one of the chiefs in the palace, who received the women on behalf of the Olubadan, Oba Yinusa Ogundipe, said the Oba was abreast of the situation and that normalcy would soon be restored.

The governor held a security council meeting, shortly after which he inspected the extent of damage to the secretariat complex and his office in the aftermath of last Thursday’s violence.

Our correspondents gathered at about 8.30pm on Wednesday that some prominent indigenes of Ibadan had intensified efforts to make the pro-Adedibu legislators jettison the move to remove Ladoja.

Sources however said that the police headquarters had concluded arrangements to deploy more policemen to the city to complement the efforts of the state command.

One of the sources claimed that some of the policemen might be assigned the duty of ensuring that the 18-pro-Adedibu legislators had easy access on Thursday (today) to the Assembly complex.

Already there were speculations that the Adedibu-18 could mount pressure on the CJ to set up the panel to investigate the governor to prepare the grounds for his impeachment in the next few days.

As at 9.45pm on Wednesday, the outcome the meeting between the Ibadan elders and Obasanjo was not known.

The PUNCH, Thursday, December 29, 2005