By Chuks Eke
A vacation court sitting at Anambra state Judiiciary Headquarters, Awka, presided over by Justice Jude Obiorah has ordered the transmission to regular court the case file containing 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 order for the transmission of the case file was sequel to the expiration of this year’s annual vacation period for the judiciary and the emergence of a new legal year in the state.
The adjournment came as a result of an oral application made by the leading counsel to the applicants, Kpajie Nnamdi Ibegbu SAN, with G.B. Obi SAN and other junior lawyers who requested the court to transmit the case file to the Administrative Judge of Onitsha Judicial Division to either assign the matter to another judge in the judicial division or hear the motion by himself.
The applicants who are the Incorporated Trustees of Onitsha Sports Club, Chief Dan Okafor, President of the club, Chief Tobechi Ejezie, past president of the club and Chief Pius Nweke, a member of the trustees for themselves and on behalf of the Incorporated Trustees of Onitsha Sports Club had brought the motion seeking to stop the respondents from further encroaching into the sports club premises and demolishing some structures therein in the name of laying claims to the ownership of the land within and around the sports club.
In the motion No 0/285M/2024, the applicants are specifically asking that the defendants, 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 be restrained from further wrecking more harvocs on the premises of the sports club.
They therefore prayed the court to grant the interlocutory injunction restraining the defendants joinrly and severally, their agents, servants, privies and workmen from interfering with the applicants’ possession and use of the parcel of land in dispute or continuing to destroy any of their structures on the land in dispute situate and being at Egerton Road, GRA, Onitsha, pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit.
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.
