Jonathan: Court Rules On Impeachment Suit, Today

A Federal High Court, Abuja, will today rule on whether the impeachment proceedings against President Goodluck Jonathan should continue or not.

The House of Representatives had threatened to impeach the president over poor budget implementation.

The National Chairman of African Liberation Party (ALP), Dr. Emmanuel Osita Okere, wants Justice Gabriel Kolawole to stop the House.

Moving the exparte application, the applicant’s counsel, Alex Williams prayed the court to grant an interim order restraining the House, saying, it was capable of distracting the president from discharging his duties.

The defendants are the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal; the House of Representatives, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice and President Jonathan.

In his affidavit in support of the originating summons, the plaintiff stated that the move to impeach the president is heating up the polity, describing it as a disguise to cause political turmoil.

The plaintiff wants the court to determine whether:

Whether upon proper reading and interpretation of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, any provision of the Constitution made 100 per cent implementation of the Federal budget of Nigeria for each fiscal year as appropriated by National Assembly mandatory.

It also wants to determine whether upon proper reading and interpretation of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, the National Assembly has the power to impeach the president from office for failure to implement the budget by 100 per cent for any given fiscal year?

Whether the Constitution prescribed any timeframe or date in each fiscal year within which to declare the budget as non-implemented?

If the above questions are answered in his favour, he is seeking the following reliefs:

A declaration that the move by the National Assembly to impeach the president from office for non-implementation of 100 per cent of the 2012 budget is premature, abuse of legislative powers, malevolent, unconstitutional, null and void.

An order of perpetual injunction restraining the leadership of the National Assembly from impeaching the president for non-implementation of 100 per cent of the budget as appropriated

An order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from harassing or further harassing the president with threats of impeachment or commencing any process of impeachment of the president for non-implementation of 100 per cent of the budget.

An order prohibiting the president or the Executive arm of government from hurriedly executing any part of the budget when/where the circumstances at hand does not permit prudent execution of such.

L-R: Acting Director, Human Resources and Administration, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Mr Danjuma Bitiyong, Assistant Editor-in-Chief (Multi-Media), Mr Sani Adamu, Executive Director (Marketing), Otunba Jide Adebayo, and Secretary, Tax Appeal Tribunal, Mr Aliyu Saka, during his visit to NAN headquarters in Abuja, on Wednesday