Shortly after the Federal High Court finished the first mention of a suit brought against the federal executive by Femi Falana, a Lagos lawyer; the court went into another session on a similar case.
This time it was Bamidele Aturu, another Lagos lawyer, asking the court to compel the vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, to act in the absence of President Umaru Yar'Adua because the continued absence of Mr Yar'Adua is beginning to affect him too.
The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa was the defendant in both cases. But just before he introduced the state counsel that entered appearance with him for Mr. Aturu's suit, Mr. Aondoakaa told the judge that he had noticed an error in the submission of Mr. Aturu and as such could not continue his defence.
The justice minister told the judge that instead of referring to the Federal Executive Council (popularly called FEC) in his suit, Mr. Aturu made reference to the Executive Council of the Federation which, he claimed, did not exist. He demanded that Mr. Aturu use FEC in his submission unless "he would be referring to someone else."
Thereafter, he went ahead to introduce his team.
When it was Mr. Aturu's turn to introduce his team, he set off to address what he termed the minister's "ignorance of the constitution."
"My Lord, I must thank the Attorney General for insisting that the right must be done; but, unfortunately, this time around, I am not going to agree with him," he said. "The name is Executive Council of the Federation, by virtue of Section 144 of the constitution of Nigeria."
Ignorant minister
Immediately he mentioned this, the Attorney General and his team frantically pulled out their copies of the 1999 Constitution and hastily flipped through its pages, in search of the section Mr. Aturu mentioned. At this point, members of the audience werestruggling to muffle their laughter to evade the contempt of the court.
Mr. Aturu argued that he had studied the 1999 constitution and there is no place where the law made reference to an entity like Federal Executive Council.
The judge accepted Mr. Aturu's arguments and the hearing continued.
But outside the court room, observers who witnessed the short drama were already in clusters asking themselves: "Did the minister just goof? Didn't he know all the while that FEC is an unconstitutional coinage?"
Some argued that the minister is perhaps too busy with politics that he has little time to study the little details in the constitution. But others argued that as a Justice Minister, he should sleep and wake on the constitution.
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