JUST IN: Court rejects motion seeking to stop Buhari from inaugurating ministers

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has dismissed an application seeking to restrain President Muhammadu Buhari from inaugurating the ministerial nominees recently cleared by the Senate.

Presided over by Justice Taiwo Taiwo, the court in a ruling on Monday, dismissed an ex-parte application file by a lawyer, Musa Baba-panya.

Justice Taiwo said he will prefer to hear the substantive suit and give a formal judgment rather than granting interim restraining orders as sought by the plaintiff.

The judge ordered the plaintiff to effect personal service of the originating and other processes so far filed in the case on the defendants and return for a date for hearing.

The plaintiff’s contention is to the effect that the President’s non-nomination of an Abuja indigene as a ministerial nominee was disobedience of a subsisting judgment of the Court of Appeal.

Baba-Panya claimed that the Court of Appeal, in the judgment delivered on March 15, 2018 in Abuja, held among others, that Abuja possesses the status of a state and should be so treated.

To the plaintiff, since the Constitution stipulates that every state of the federation should produce a minister, Abuja deserves to also be considered.

President Buhari and the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) are listed as defendants in the case marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/878/19.