A case between the Centre for Black
Culture and International Understanding and the Attorney-General of Osun
State will come up for hearing before the Federal High Court, Osogbo on
October 12, 2015.
This is contained in a hearing notice issued by the registrar of the court and dated September 15, 2015.
A photocopy of the hearing notice,
signed and stamped by the same registrar, was made available to our
correspondent in Osogbo on Sunday.
The case with suit no FHC/OS/CS/3/2013
has the Attorney General of Osun State as the first defendant while the
CBCIU and others are the plaintiffs.
The notice read, “This cause will be
transferred from the general cause list to the hearing paper for the
12th day of October 2015 at 9.am and will come on to be heard on that
day if the business of the court permits or otherwise on some
adjournment day of which you will receive no further notice.
“If either party desires to postpone the
hearing he must apply to the court as soon as possible for that
purpose, and if the application is based on any matter of fact, he must
be prepared to give proof of those facts.”
The
chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the CBCIU has sparked a bitter
war of words between former Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Nobel
laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka.
Oyinlola, who was the governor of Osun
State at the time the centre was established, was the chairman of the
board. But Governor Rauf Aregbesola, who took over from Oyinlola after
the judgment of the Court of Appeal of November 26, 2010, appointed
Soyinka as the chairman of another board of the centre.
Soyinka recently accused the former
governor of carrying out illegally as the chairman of the board of the
UNESCO-affiliated centre but Oyinlola, who showed documents which
authorised him to be the permanent chairman of the board, countered
this.
Oyinlola noted that Aregbesola, who
appointed Soyinka as the board chairman, had eventually discovered the
true status of the centre and had even initiated a process to normalise
the situation.
The former governor said on September 10
at a press conference at his residence in Okuku, Osun State, that the
Federal High Court, Osogbo refused Soyinka the right to take over the
case initiated by the CBCIU in 2013.
Oyinlola said, “What is the status of
the centre’s board today? Prof. Soyinka’s ‘board’ tested this in court
in 2013 when it sought to take over a case instituted by us. And what
did Soyinka get from that move? The Federal High Court, Osogbo in a
ruling on October 10, 2013 (appeal on which was struck out by the Court
of Appeal, Akure on 26 February, 2015), decided as follows:
“It is not in doubt that the first
plaintiff, ‘ Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding,’ a
UNESCO affiliated institution was established in Osogbo, Osun state
through the Osun State House of Assembly which passed the law in that
behalf which was signed into law on 29th December, 2008.
“Thereafter, it was registered under
Part C of the Companies And Allied Matters Act vide a certificate of
Incorporation dated23rd July, 2009. As this case is still at its
preliminary stage, I will refrain from making comments that may have the
effect of determining the substantive suit one way or another.
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