The Enugu State government has filed an appeal before the Court of Appeal sitting in Enugu in the case involving government and the dismissed chairperson of the Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board (ENSUBEB), Mrs. Ethel Nebo-Ezeabasili.
The appeal was sequel to the June 18, 2014 judgment of Justice C.I. Nwobodo of the Enugu State High Court which declared the removal of Nebo-Ezeabasili for fraud as illegal and unconstitutional.
The notice filed by the Honourable Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Enugu State, Anthony I. Ani (SAN), faulted the judgment in its entirety, exposing obvious loopholes which the trial judge ignored.
It will be recalled that the former ENSUBEB chairperson was removed from office in November 2012 for gross misconducts including defrauding the government of the sum two hundred and thirty million, two hundred and forty five thousand naira (N230,245,000) belonging to ENSUBEB.
The police had also investigated the complaint of gross misconducts against her while she is currently standing trial in charge number E/21C/2014 for stealing the above sum.
Though Mrs. Nebo-Ezeabasili has continued to evade all attempts to serve her with the notice of trial, her surety who took her on bail from the police, has been served with the papers in order to bring the run-away defendant to court.
One of the grounds of the appeal filed on June 30, 2014 by Ani (SAN) was that the learned trial judge, C.I. Nwobodo erred in law in failing to resolve the fundamental issue of jurisdiction before going into the substantive case.
The Honourable Attorney-General also contended that the first and second defendants (Mrs. Ifeoma Nwobodo as Chief of Staff to Governor Sullivan Chime and Amaechi Okolo, Secretary to the State Government) sued in their official capacities by Nebo-Ezeabasili before the High Court were entitled to three months pre-action notice which was not given to them before instituting the action.
According to Ani, “the learned trial judge erred in law when she held that the appellants (Nwobodo and Okolo) being political appointees are not entitled to the pre-action notice mandatorily provided for public officers under the State Proceedings Law.”
Another ground of the appeal was that there were contentious issues of facts before the parties, making the proceedings “hostile” which required trial by ordinary writ of summons, pleadings and oral evidence.
Government’s other disagreement with Nwobodo’s ruling was that she was wrong to accept that “a private legal practitioner can institute an action on behalf of a statutory body owned by the State Government without being authorized by the Attorney-General of Enugu State.”
Throughout the proceedings, Mrs. Nebo-Ezeabasili never appeared in court and did not prove any damages flowing naturally from her removal from office for misconduct. Yet, the trial judge awarded her ten million naira for damages.
