Perjury: Aluko urges Court to quash arrest warrant

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By; Oladele Adedayo, Ado-Ekiti.
Embattled Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) in Ekiti
State, Dr. Tope Aluko, has moved to vacate the Warrant of Arrest issued against him by a Chief Magistrate Court in Ado-Ekiti last week.
Chief Magistrate Adesoji Adegboye, had on February 3, 2016 granted an order, compelling the Police to bring Aluko to Court to answer
charges of perjury preferred against him by the state government.
Aluko was alleged to have recanted the statement earlier made on oath during the trial of the election of Governor Ayodele Fayose at the Election Petition Tribunal, where he served as a principal Witness to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in a case instituted by the All Progressives Congress(APC).
The PDP Scribe had a couple of weeks ago granted an interview where he averred that the election of June 21, 2014,where Fayose had defeated former governor Kayode Fayemi to emerge governor, was allegedly rigged by the PDP in collaboration with the military.
Aluko, had in a motion on notice number  MAD/1ocm/ 2016, filed at the Ado-Ekiti Magistrate Court and dated February 10, 2016, sought the
order of the honourable court vacating and or set aside the warrant
of arrest issued against defendant.
The motion was supported by two-paragraph affidavit deposed to by Barrister Ayodeji Daramola.
The defendant (Aluko) predicated his plea on the following grounds: that
the court lacks the jurisdiction to entertain the application and that the application of the complainant is defective and incompetent, that the application was a flagrant abuse of court process and that there is no prima facie case of perjury against him before the order was handed down.
Addressing newsmen, principal counsels to Aluko, Barristers Niran Owoseeni and Wale Abimbola from the Law Firm of Niran Owoseeni and Co, described the warrant of arrest issued by a Chief Magistrate Court against their client as a serious judicial error that needed to be reversed to preserve the integrity of the judiciary.
He posited that it was rather curious that the court could go ahead and issued a warrant of arrest when there was no valid and existing charge against Aluko, saying the court must have been misled  under this circumstance.
Owoseeni added that Aluko didn’t swear to any affidavit to counter the statement alleged to have been made during the election petition trial in Abuja, where he purportedly said in an affidavit he deposed to that the said election was free, fair and credible.
The lawyer described this as a strong point that had vitiated the
competence of the court to adjudicate on the motion ex parte brought by government to seek for the warrant of arrest order.
“We are in a new era, this jackboot or catch him approach won’t work. Things must be done properly in accordance to the law. The Ex parte order brought by the state government by Barrister Kolapo Kolade was filed on February 3 and the order was granted by court the same day, this is curious.
“The perjury allegation against Aluko was still at the realm of
speculation, so, the order doesn’t comply with the provision of the law and this makes the court incompetent in the first instance, or may be the DPP had read the law upside down”, he said.

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