By Abba Gwale
Jaafar Jaafar, the Publisher of the Daily Nigerian, an online newspaper, has raised a preliminary objection to a motion seeking to amend a statement of claims in a 3-billion naira libel suit before Kano State High Court. The suit was instituted by Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State over a series of videos exposed by the Daily Nigerian that showed the governor allegedly receiving huge bribes in US dollars.
The governor, through his counsel, Offiong Offiong SAN, is seeking leave of the court to amend his claims with additional witnesses.
However, the counsel to Jaafar Jaafar, Ubi Utum Eteng, filed a preliminary objection to the motion on the ground that the motion is incompetent since Offiong Offiong who takes over as counsel to the plaintiff from Nuruddeen Ayagi did not properly inform the court on change of counsel. He, therefore, urged the court to dismiss the application.
“The plaintiff, that’s the governor, filed an application to further amend what they have claimed. But what we the counsel to Jaafar Jaafar said that, what they did to the former counsel to the plaintiff is not proper. They are supposed to file the process in accordance with the rule of the court that they want to change the counsel. That was the argument we had and the court adjourned to 8th March 2021 for ruling on the application,” said Jaafar’s counsel.
On the other hand, counsel to Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, Marcellinus Duru, argued that the rules of the court do not require counsel taking over matter to make formal application. Therefore, he urged the court to discountenance the objection.
“What happened today was that we, counsel to the plaintiff, wanted to amend our proceedings while the defendant filed the preliminary objection contesting the motion which we filed, and we replied them and we stick to our request,” said Ganduje’s counsel.
The trial judge, Justice Suleiman Na-Malam, adjourned the matter to 8th of March 2021 for ruling on the application.
It will be recalled that Daily Nigerian had exclusively published videos, which showed Gov Ganduje stuffing bundles of dollars, allegedly collected as kickback, in his pockets.
The State House of Assembly had started investigating the case but dropped it when Ganduje rushed to court and secured injunction to halt the proceedings.
