24/06/2025
ARIBISALA V AMCON AND SOWEMIMO V AMCON: The Many Faces of Technical Justice -By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN.
There are many sides to justice, as we have all come to understand the term today and unless you are intrinsically involved in some of the cases, you may wonder how the wheels of justice roll. In these two court cases involving very Senior members of the Bar, we see justice playing out in its different forms. In one of the cases, a lawyer worked tirelessly to recover money for AMCON but he was not satisfied with what he was paid as his legal fees. In court however, technical justice robbed him of his claims purely on the basis of the mode of exercise of the constitutional right of appeal. In the second case, AMCON desired to have the Senior Counsel give account of his stewardship as receiver/manager, but the issue of the mode of signing the writ of summons to commence the case delayed AMCON’s claims, moving from the trial court in 2015 when it was filed ultimately to the Supreme Court in 2025 when judgment was eventually delivered, spanning a period of ten years. These two cases, both involving AMCON, were not determined on their merits as they dwelt on technical points of law regarding the jurisdiction of the court. This is the situation with many cases that are pending in the courts, where technical issues of law have dwarfed the merits of the cases, with theresultant effect of robbing people of justice. This has in turn led to the call for all our courts to adopt the procedure of Election Tribunals, whereby all objections are incorporated into the substantive case to be determined at the end of the trial. The facts of these two cases are stated here as reported in the law reports.
See comment 👇
