A Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday rejected an application by the Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Force (PRTF), Mr. Abdul-Rasheed Maina, asking the court to protect him against police harassment and put on hold the bench warrant issued against him by the police.
Maina had through his lawyer, Mr. Mogaji Mahmud (SAN), filed an ex-parte application, seeking an interim injunction against the Senate President, David Mark; the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Muhammed Abubakar and others for issuing a bench warrant against him.
When the matter came up yesterday, Mahmud told the court that the motion on notice for the enforcement of his client’s human rights had been served on parties but noted that the defendants are acting in breach of the suit.
The senior advocate also argued that once a suit had been filed, all parties must maintain that nothing was done to destroy the subject matter of the case.
According to Mahmud, the conduct of the defendants through constant threats and steps taken had injected fear into his client’s mind, which led to the application.
But in his ruling over the ex-parte application, Justice Adamu Bello dismissed the application on the grounds that it was belated and offended the rules of the court.
The judge also held that it was regrettable that Mahmud commented on the exparte application in a television interview on Thursday and even mentioned his (Justice Bello) name as the judge hearing it when it was not supposed to be in the public domain.
The judge then said, “I must say that the conduct of the learned senior counsel in the circumstance is inappropriate. By leaking the hearing of the exparte application to the general public, he has wittingly or unwittingly converted the motion exparte to a motion in notices, the fore deprive this court the discretion to grant the interim orders of injunction.