A Federal High Court sitting in Osogbo, Osun State, remanded Olalekan Oyeyemi, Govenor Adeleke’s a member of the Osun Park Management System, to the Ile-Ife Correctional Centre on Thursday.
The state governor, Ademola Adeleke, selected Oyeyemi, also known as ‘Emir’.
The Nigeria Police Force hauled him to court and filed an 11-count charge against him.
He had previously been detained by the Osun State Police Command’s Anti-Kidnapping Unit in 2023 for beating a man into a coma.
At Thursday’s sitting, shortly after Oyeyemi was docked and his charge was about to be read, his counsel, Edmund Biriomoni, raised the question of jurisdiction.
Biriomoni, who had contested the court’s jurisdiction to hear the case, as well as some of the counts named against his client, stated that he had submitted a preliminary objection to the murder allegation brought against Oyeyemi.
He stated, “We were served with an 11-count charge.” We are contesting the court’s jurisdiction to hear the matter. We are contesting the court’s jurisdiction to hear the defendant’s plea on Counts 4 through 8, which involve murder.
“We filed a preliminary objection to the first charge that has murder from number 1 to 4 and the prosecutor substituted the charge, and changed the numbers we are challenging.”
Responding, the prosecutor, Umar Usman of the Force Headquarters in Abuja, requested that the court withdraw a charge originally submitted before it on October 16, 2023, and substitute it with an updated charge dated January 31, 2024.
After accepting the modified charge, the prosecutor urged the court to take the defendant’s plea.
However, after seeing the altered indictment, defense counsel requested court permission to verbally oppose counts 4 through 11 of the new charge, but the judge denied the motion.
Usman maintained that objections to jurisdiction could only be addressed after the defendant had entered a plea, requesting that the case proceed.
However, in his ruling, Justice Nathaniel Ayo-Emmanuel permitted the charge’s withdrawal and substitute.
He remanded the defendant to Ile-Ife Correctional Centre and urged Biriomoni to file a formal objection to the amended charge on behalf of his client.
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