The Supreme Court of Nigeria has delivered a unanimous five-member judgement, strongly condemning what it described as the “weaponisation of judicial processes”, in a ruling that set aside a series of ex-parte orders issued by the Court of Appeal.
The Apex Court criticised the Court of Appeal for granting what it termed a “restorative ex- parte order”, describing the development as a “judicial tragedy” and warning against the growing misuse of far-reaching interim reliefs.
It held that the relief granted by the Court of Appeal was, in substance, an interlocutory injunction which ought not to have been issued ex-parte, stressing that such orders must not be used to determine substantive rights at an interim stage.
The Supreme Court further ruled that the Court of Appeal exercised jurisdiction in a matter that was not properly before it, reiterating the settled legal principle that the mere filing of a Notice of Appeal does not, on its own, confer jurisdiction on an appellate court.
It also found the ex-parte order staying proceedings before the trial court to be fundamentally defective, and accordingly, set it aside in its entirety.
