A Federal High Court in Abuja has again declined to stop the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Yakubu Dogara, from appointing principal officers and standing committees for the House of Representatives.
While ruling in an ex parte motion brought by Honourable Abubakar Lado and Olanipekun Jimoh, seeking to stop the Speaker from appointing principal officers, Justice Gabriel Kolawole held that the issue was a domestic affair of the House of Representatives.
Justice Kolawole said that “the court could only intervene when there is substantial infraction of the 1999 Constitution”, stressing that ‘for now there has been no breach of the Constitution’.
He added that it was not the duty of the court to choose principal officers for the National Assembly, because it had its own machinery.
The court also maintained that it would not allow itself to be used as a platform by aggrieved members, to get what they should canvass on the floor of the House.
Justice Kolawole insisted that the court was not a supervising institution for the National Assembly on account of Separation of Power and that there was no evidence before the court that the constitution had been breached.
He, therefore, refused the application in its entity and thereafter directed that the defendants in the substantive suit, which includes the Speaker of the House of Representatives, his Deputy, the Clerk of the House and the Clerk of the National Assembly, be put on notice and served with the originating summon.
The case has been adjourned to August 12 before Justice Adeniyi Ademola.
In a related development, an ex parte order seeking to stop the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, from constituting the Senate Standing Committe, was rejected on Tuesday.
The Judge, Justice Kolawole, said there was nothing urgent in the application.
