By Mark Baber
October 9 – The immediate past President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Aminu Maigari, Secretary-General Musa Amadu and others escaped imprisonment for contempt of court on Wednesday by not turning up to court.
The counsel for Maigari and Amadu, who did make it to the hearing in Jos, argued his clients had not been served with the order to appear in court, leading the judge to adjourn the matter to October 23 and to order the papers be served through the counsel.
Justice Ambrose Allagoa of the Federal High Court sitting in Jos heard the application by the plaintiffs Obinna Ogba and Yahaya Adamu, (both members of the Chris Giwa faction), that the defendants should be imprisoned after disobeying a September 19 injunction not to organise the elections which resulted in the election of Amaju Pinnick as NFF President.
The court had issued the injunction at the time as Giwa and his faction claimed he had himself been legitimately elected as President of the NFF on August 26.
The plaintiff’s counsel pulled no punches in Wednesday’s hearing telling the judge: “My Lord, their failure to appear before court is a sign of belligerence, they elevated themselves above the order of this honorable court.
“I urge my Lord to run an order of the court to commit the defendants to prison or in the alternative, issue a warrant of arrest but we are more inclined to their committal to prison.”
Although the plaintiff’s counsel claimed that the orders had been properly served by substituted means, the judge ruled that he could not commit the defendants to prison in their absence, the earlier application which the plaintiffs brought did not apply in the present circumstance and he therefore adjourned the case to the 23 October, 2014 to allow the defendants to be served, through their counsel, with new orders to attend court.
Unless Maigari and Musa Amadu manage to evade their own counsel it appears likely they will now appear before the High Court on October 23, to answer contempt of court allegations.
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