The Supreme Court has rejected Murtala Nyako’s appeal to be reinstated as governor of Adamawa State.
The court affirmed the ruling of a Court of Appeal sitting in Yola, which also rejected his request.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said the request sought by the former governor at the apex court had already been withdrawn by his counsel in the lower court.
According to him, having withdrawn the relief voluntarily at the court of appeal, the appellant has no basis for seeking the same relief again at the Supreme Court; he therefore dismissed the appeal in its entirety for lack of merit.
Nyako was impeached on July 15, 2014, after 17 of 25 members of the Adamawa State House of Assembly adopted a report of a panel set up to investigate him for alleged corruption impeached him as governor of the state.
The Supreme Court explained in its lead judgment read by Justice Dattijo Mohammed that the appeal had to fail because Nyako’s lawyer had compromised the case at the Court of Appeal by withdrawing the prayer seeking the ex-governor’s reinstatement.
Justice Mohammed held that a lawyer was entitled to “conduct, compromise or withdraw” his or her client’s case, but that there could be no ground of appeal when a litigant’s case was compromised by his or her lawyer.
“On that score alone the appeal fails,” Justice Mohammed ruled.
The Justice of the Supreme Court said the remedy approved by the appeal court by ordering the payment of salaries and other entitlements accruable to the ex-governor for the period he was illegally removed from office, was in order.
But he ruled that Nyako had to continue to bear as his cross the compromise of his case by his lawyer when the said counsel voluntarily withdrew the prayer for the ex-governor’s reinstatement before the Court of Appeal.
He ruled, “Because of the special facts enunciated in this appeal, that fact of compromising his case by his counsel is a cross that the appellant (Nyako) will continue to bear.
“So, there will never be a forum again where that issue of reinstatement would be raised again, and to that extent, that informs my dismissal of the appeal in its entirety.”
Justice Tanko Muhammad and other members of the apex court’s panel, comprising Justices Clara Ogunbiyi, Mary Peter-Odili, Chima Nweze and Amir Sanusi, agreed with the lead judgment prepared by Justice Dattijo Mohammed.
Respondents to Nyako’s appeals were the Adamawa State House of Assembly, the Chairman of the seven-man panel that recommended the removal of the ex-governor to the Adamawa State House of Assembly, Buba Kaigama, and the Inspector-General of Police.
