Nigerians waited eagerly for the 15th day of February, 2022, because most of them expected to know their fate and that of the old naira notes on that day.
This saga is not new to anyone in Nigeria. The Central Bank had redesigned some Naira notes and had directed that the old ones which were still in circulation would cease to be legal tender by February 10th. This led to the institution of a Court action by the three state governors against the Federal Government at the Supreme Court.
The governors succeeded in getting an Exparte order from the Court and the matter was adjourned to the 15th day of February, 2022 for hearing of the main matter.
Allow me to explain a few legal procedures to you here:
- In law there is something called Motion Exparte, and another called Motion on Notice. They are both applications that are used to pray for/ask for an Order of the Court. The difference is that the first is done in the absence of the other party, why the second is done with the knowledge of the other party.
- The Motion exparte is usually asking the court to grant an Order pending when the Motion on Notice is heard. In other words, you are asking the court to do something, until the real matter is heard. Take our case for example, the Governors asked the Supreme Court to restrain the Federal Government from implementing the February 10th deadline pending the hearing of the main case. This was what was granted.
- The matter was then adjourned to February 15th February for the hearing of the main matter. The main matter being whether the Federal Government should be allowed to implement its directive at a time like this regardless of the hardship Nigerians are facing, and whether three months (the initial period for compliance) was not too short for such implementation.
- However, on February 15th, while Nigerians waited for whatever was going to happen at the Supreme Court, the Justices of Supreme didn’t hear the main suit.
- Why?
- Because other States had decided to join in the matter. Some intended to join the initial three governors, while others intended to join the Attorney General (AG) Federation.
- Now, in other to join a suit and become a party in the suit, you have to bring an Application (Motion on Notice) asking the Court to join you to the suit.
- The law is that once there is an Application in any suit, the Application must be looked into BEFORE the main matter is heard. So rather than hearing the main suit, the Court had to join all the parties that wanted to be joined.
The question I have with this is, why on earth did these other governors want to be joined? For goodness sake, whatever order the Supreme Court would make on the suit filed by the three governors would be bind on all Nigerian states. The Judges even made the suggestion of them hearing the main matter since it would most likely have the same effect. This suggestion was not taken by counsel to the states seeking to be joined. In my opinion these applications for joinder were all of no use. These applications were the reason the main suit/matter was not heard yesterday. They stalled the proceedings. Obviously, more governors might also want to join by next time. They should continue. They will just keep dragging the suit. Unless that was the intention from the beginning, after all, they already got the exparte order.
- Well, the matter was then adjourned to Feb 22nd for hearing of the main matter, let us hope nobody begs to be joined on that day, or than no one brings another Application, because he more the Applications, the more the Supreme Court would push. Actually, this is usually a trick by some legal practitioners. If you for some reason do not want the main matter to be heard on time, you keep bringing frivolous Applications to stall the proceedings. I really hope this is not the case.
- However, the order gotten from the motion exparte is still pending and in force, only that it is not being complied with by the Central Bank of Nigeria and its governors and I explained why here.
- Another issue is that the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, announced early this morning that the old 200 Naira note is still a legal tender till April 10th 2023, and will co-exist with the new notes till the said date. As for the other two, he declared them illegal.
See tactics 😆