Recuses self from suit against Lagos, others.

Justice Daniel Osiagor of a Federal High Court in Lagos has recused themself from a suit filed by Admiralty Fleet Limited (BICS Garden) and Admiral Festus Porbeni (rtd) against Lagos State Attorney-General, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and Chairman, Lagos State Special Task Force.

The judge, who said he would no longer like to hear the matter, alleged that there were distortions of facts in a petition written against him by the Attorney-General of Lagos State.

He stressed that the petitioner wrote without looking at the record of the court.

Justice Osiagor, who stated this at the resumed hearing of the suit, yesterday, informed parties that following the petition written by Lagos State Attorney-General, he would no longer like to preside over the matter.

He said: “I will not want to continue with this matter. I will tell the Admin Judge that I will like to recuse myself. The Attorney-General wrote his petition without looking at the record of the court. It is either he was misled in the ministry or they want to be mischievous. The attorney-general has distorted the facts and I will not want to continue with the matter. Whenever the Chief Judge writes, I will respond appropriately.”

The judge said that if the petitioner had taken time to look at the records of the court, he would have seen that the court refused an ex-parte application brought by the plaintiffs on October 12, 2021, and ordered that the defendants should all be put on notice.

He wondered why the petitioner did not serve the other parties with copies of the petition.

“You wrote a petition and you did not serve any of the parties in the suit. This is not the way it should be done in a noble profession. This is not noble; it is dirty. It is not decent or transparent. We are not fighting ourselves but we should be guided by principles and integrity and not primordial sentiment. I have principles guiding me aside from being a judge,” he said.

The judge, however, reiterated that the restraining order he made on October 18, 2021, against the first and third defendants still subsists and has not been set aside.