Lawyer sues Lagos CJ over magazine ban

The Country newspaper Vol.1 No. 7 page 13, Monday, April 1, 2002

Lawyer sues Lagos CJ over magazine ban

The ban placed by the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice (Mrs) Ibitola Sotuminu, on the sale of a weekly judicial magazine, Squib, is now a subject of legal contest at the Ikeja High Court.

Sotuminu had earlier this year ordered that the magazine should not be sold within the premises of the state judiciary.

Published by a lawyer, Mr. Adesina Ogunlana, Squib which is sold for N50 per copy, has been addressing issues connected with the state judiciary particularly those considered corrupt and indecent.

The magazine, which was first published in March last year, had launched a direct attack on alleged misconduct of many judges and judicial officers, leading to its ban by the CJ. Early this year, its vendors were arrested by policemen and later released on bail for contravening the CJ’s order.

Ogunlana was himself nabbed by the police for publishing and selling the journal.
Apart from columns which address several issues bordering on judicial corruption, Squib deploys monitors to all the 42 courts at the Lagos Ikeja division of the High Court.

The monitor reports on the time each of the judges begins sitting, when they proceed on recess and when their courts rise for the day.
When a court does not sit or when its monitors did not go to a particular court, the Squib would expose this in its column that tends to measure how hard each of the judges work weekly between Mondays and Fridays.
Last February 18, Justice Shitta Bey granted Ogunlana the application for leave to enforce his fundamental rights against the CJ, the police and the Attorney General of Lagos State.

He had filed a N5 million lawsuit on February 5 seeking the order of the court which the judge granted.
Meanwhile, the ding-dong affair continues as Ogunlana intensifies the sale of his magazine.


Related links: www.learnedsquib.blogspot.com
www.squiblogg.blogspot.com
www.coverstory.blogspot.com
www.squibpublications.wordpress.com