Ekitigate: Aluko loses application to stop warrant

Ado Ekiti Chief Magistrate’s Soji Adegboye has dismissed PDP ex-scribe Temitope Aluko’s application to set aside the arrest warrant issued on him February 3.

The magistrate said Wednesday the application was a mere “academic exercise, time wasting and abuse of court process”.

The motion on notice filed by Aluko had restrained the execution of the arrest warrant issued against him.

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The Ekiti police commissioner was also joined as second defendant and was required to execute the order against Aluko.

In something like a confessional statement said on Channels Television in February, Aluko, who is now in the APC, said he lied as a witness at the Governorship Tribunal in Ekiti in 2014.

And the magistrate ordered Aluko’s arrest and prosecution for perjury, following a motion ex-parte number MAD/10cm/2016, filed by the Ekiti government against Aluko and the commissioner of police.

Through his counsel, the former PDP leader later filed a motion to challenge the jurisdiction of the Magistrate Court to issue a warrant of arrest against him.

In his argument, counsel to Aluko, Niran Owoseni said Section 7 of Magistrate Law, 2014 specified that the magistrate court could not act outside its territorial jurisdiction, describing the court action as incompetent nand abuse of court process.

But Gbemiga Daramola, the state’s director of public prosecution, opposing the motion, said the warrant of arrest was a substantive matter, and the ruling had a force of judgment.

He also added the Chief Magistrate Court lacked jurisdiction to review its own judgment.