The Osun State House of Assembly has thrown out the petition filed against Governor Rauf Aregbesola by Justice Folahanmi Oloyede, a serving judge in the state judiciary.
The House, acting on the recommendations of a seven-man committee headed by Mr. Akintunde Adegboye, also recommended the judge for sanction by the state Judicial Service Commission.
The committee’s recommendation was adopted after the Majority Leader, Hon. Timothy Owoeye, moved a motion on same and was seconded by Hon. Abdulai Ibrahim.
The committee’s recommendations lashed out at the embattled judge for abandoning the petition for non-appearance, lack of evidence as well as premising her petition on rumours and hearsay.
Speaker of the House, Najeem Salaam, at the plenary, said the embattled Justice Oloyede had betrayed the oath of her office, adding that the judge lost her worth to be a judge in the temple of justice.
According to the Speaker, the violation of processes and procedure as spelt out by the constitution and judicial code of conduct, through the judge’s partisan and emotional disposition on the allegations raised “against the government she is serving, has shown her as unfit for the bench”.
He explained that he allowed the petition to sail through and that the state parliament under his watch elected to look into the petition not to gag Oloyede’s freedom of expression in accordance with sections 128 and 129 of the Constitution, which empowered the legislature to investigate any public petition forwarded to the House.
The Speaker noted that the issue of impeachment raised in the petition was a mere opinion of the petitioner, not the position of the law.
Salam added that the parliament was conscious of the letter and the spirit of Section 188 raised by some lawyers, but insisted that a petition raised by the judicial officer could not have been substituted for the position of the one-third of the Assembly members capable of intimating impeachment article.
He said: “We appreciate the views of the two legal luminaries who ventilated their opinions on the conduct of Justice Oloyede and the move of the parliament to tolerate the petition at all.
“But having found no precedence for the action of the judge, the Parliament under me chose to set up the committee to investigate the content of the petition.
“But we are surprised that the judge lost the courage to come forward to defend the allegations leveled against the duo of the governor and his deputy; suggesting that she is not worth her onion. It shows that if an individual sues the government to her court, the ruling could be pre-empted.”
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