Court orders LASG, police to maintain status quo on Synagogue’s Engineers case.
Olaoluwa Folalu
A Federal High Court in Lagos on Wednesday ordered all the parties in the case of Synagogue’s case to maintain status quo pending the determination of the applicants’ motions on notice.
The judgment means, the Lagos State Government have been temporarily restrained from implementing the recommendations of a Coroner’s Inquest which ordered the criminal prosecution of two structural engineers for the September 12, 2014 building collapse at Synagogue Church of All Nations.
The Coroner court headed by Magistrate Oyetade Komolafe, had on July 8, 2015 indicted the two structural engineers behind the collapsed six-storey building, Messrs Oladele Ogundeji and Akinbela Fatiregun of criminal negligence and recommended them for criminal prosecution by Lagos State.
Komolafe also recommended the church for prosecution.
Based on the coroner’s verdict, Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, disclosed the readiness of the state to implement the recommendations, including filing criminal charges against the church and the two engineers.
The duo engineers, Ogundeji and Fatiregun, however, not satisfied with the coroner’s verdict through their lawyer, Olalekan Ojo, appeared on Wednesday before Justice Mohammed Idris of the Federal High Court in Lagos with ex-parte applications seeking to restrain the police from inviting or arresting them for questioning.
Ojo filed two separate motions, FHC/L/CS/1095/15 and FHC/L/CS/1096/15.
In the said motion on notice, the engineers are seeking, among other prayers: a declaration that “the findings and recommendations of the 4th respondent as contained in the 4th respondent’s verdict dated 8th July, 2015 as they relate to the applicants’ indictment for prosecution for criminal negligence and recommendation for prosecution for criminal negligence by the 1st to 3rd respondents are invalid, null and void and of no effect, whatsoever.”
They are also asking the court to declare that the Lagos CP lacked the power to act on the coroner’s verdict to investigate or prosecute them.
They also asked for a perpetual injunction restraining the Lagos State Attorney General or any officer under his authority from initiating or commencing criminal proceedings against the applicants on the basis of the findings and recommendations of the coroner.
The lawyer while seeking the protection of the court for the engineers before the presiding judge disclosed that the police had been after them and that their constitutional rights to dignity and personal liberty, enshrined in Sections 34 and 35 of the Constitution, were at stake as they could no longer move about freely.
He disclosed that the police had visited the home of Ogundeji, and that when they did not see him, they arrested and detained his brother-in-law.
On Fatiregun, the counsel said the police went to his office in Ikeja on July 16 to arrest him but he was not around but, he voluntarily gone to the Police Station following which he was arrested and detained and asked to make written statement regarding the role that his company, Hardrock Engineering Construction Limited, played in the collapsed SCOAN building.
Ojo submitted further that the move to arrest the engineers on July 16 followed the fundamental rights enforcement action that they filed against the respondents on July 15, challenging the coroner’s verdict, adding, arresting the engineers in the face of the pending suits would occasion injustice.
Following the counsel’s argument, the judge ordered all the parties to maintain status quo pending the determination of the applicants’ motions on notice and subsequently adjourned till August 3, 2015 for hearing.
The respondents in the suits are the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, the Attorney General of Lagos State and the Coroner, Oyetade Komolafe.