By Chuks Eke
The vacation court sitting at the Anambra state Judiiciary Headquarters, Awka, presided over by Justice Jude Obiorah has adjourned hearing to Wednesday, September 11, this year in a motion for interlocutory injunction seeking to restrain Ekwerekwu family of Onitsha from further interfering with the possession and use of the premises or demolition of existing structures at the premises of Onitsha Sports Club.
The adjournment followed an oral request by counsel to the respondents, Onyechi Araka Esq., who sought for a short adjournment to enable him study the counter affidavit just filed and served on him by counsel to the applicants, G.B.Obi SAN to an application that the suit be struck out for being an abuse of Judicial process.
In the Motion No. 0/285M/2024, the applicants are the Incorporated Trustees of Onitsha Sports Club, Chief Dan Okafor, President of the club, Chief Tobechi Ejezie, past president and Chief Pius Nweke, a member of the trustees for themselves and the Incorporated Trustees of Onitsha Sports Club.
The defendants are Harold Ekwerekwu, Valentine Ekwerekwu, Nonso Ekwerekwu, Obi Ekwerekwu, Igweze Ekwerekwu and Benjamin Ekwerekwu for themselves and on behalf of members of Ekwerekwu family of Okposieke kindred, Ogbolieke village, Onitsha.
In the Motion, the applicants are praying the court to grant an interlocutory injunction restraining the defendants joinrly and severally, their agents, servants, privies and workmen from interfering with the plaintiffs’ possession and use of the parcel of land in dispute or destroying any of their structures on the land in dispute situate and being at Egerton Road, GRA, Onitsha.
Insisting that the land in question is more particularly described and delineated in the survey plan attached to the building certificate of occupancy dated October 20, 1997 and registered as No. 34 at Page 34 in Volume 134 of the Lands Registry in Awka, Anambra state, the plaintiffs prayed the court to stop the defendants from further demolition of their structures, pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit.
In an affidavit in support of the motion for interlocutory injunction sworn to by the second plaintiff, Chief Dan Okafor, President of the sports club, the plaintiffs lamented that the defendants vowed to continue to destroy the remaining structures on the club’s land in dispute valued at N3 billion, as well as evict the plaintiffs from the land Viet armis, if the application is not granted.
The plaintiffs who described Onitsha Sports Club as an iconic sports and relaxation centre where Senior citizen from Anambra state and its environs gather to ward off anxiety, added that they shall enter into an undertaking to pay any damages as prescribed by the court in the event of this application turning out to be frivolous.
The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants had already destroyed structures at the club premises valued N1.05 billion adding that the motion is intended to safeguard the remaining structures valued at N3 billion from being destroyed by the defendants in their quest to lay claims to the ownership of the land where the sports club is situated.
