The Supreme Court has been asked to reject the application by the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria limited to review and set aside a 17 billion naira judgment entered against it in 2019.
The Apex Court had on January 11, 2019, upheld the judgment of the court of appeal which awarded 17 billion naira damages against the oil giant for oil spillage in Ejama-Ebubu in Tai Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State.
In a preliminary objection filed by Mr. Isaac Agbara and nine others to the application by Shell asking the apex court to set aside its earlier judgment in the matter, the respondents claim that Shell has already paid one billion naira out of the 17 billion.
But the Shell petroleum company through Mr. Wole Olanipekun described the opposition of the respondents’ application as frivolous because it has no bearing with the jurisdictional issues.
At the hearing of shell’s application, the respondents, in a preliminary objection argued through their lead counsel, Mr. Lucius Nwosu, described Shell’s request as scandalous and an affront to the finality of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Mr. Nwosu while urging the court to dismiss Shell’s application for being incompetent, submitted that the Supreme Court cannot sit on appeal in its own judgment.
He further contended that the Supreme Court by its unanimous judgment of January 11, 2020, put an end to the over 30-year-old legal tussle on the oil spillage suffered by the respondents and their people in the oil-producing region.
Nwosu drew the attention of the apex court panel to a letter of the Supreme Court in which the current Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Ibrahim Muhammad, reacted to clarification to the January 11, 2019 judgment.
He further informed the court that the judgment is sought to be set aside by the oil company had already been partly executed with over 1 billion naira recovered by the respondents, adding that section 235 of the 1999 constitution makes the supreme court a final court in the land and that no appeal can be entertained from the Supreme Court’s decision.
He, therefore, pleaded with the apex court to reject the invitation by the Shell company to make the court sit as an appellate court in its own judgment.
Mr Nwosu further argues that the same shell who is reluctant to pay damages to Nigerian victims of its oil spillage had in similar situations paid over $206 million to victims in Mexico.
But Shell petroleum company through Mr Wole Olanipekun described the opposition of the respondents’ application as frivolous because it has no bearing with the jurisdictional issues.
Mr Olanipekun contended that what the respondents tagged a judgment was a ruling and not a final judgment.
He submitted that Shell’s request has judicial precedence, adding that the oil giant would not have come back to the supreme court to seek for review of its judgment if there was no precedent.
He pleaded with the apex court to dismiss the preliminary objection to its client’s application for judicial review.
After listening to the submissions of parties to the preliminary objection, the five-man panel led by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour, adjourned the suit to November 17, 2020 for the ruling.
