The
Chief Justice of The Gambia, Emmanuel Olusegun Fagbenle, has resigned from his
post last week, The Point newspaper has gathered.
Following
his resignation, Justice Fagbenle left The Gambia for Nigeria, his native
country, on Saturday, 21 January.
Judiciary
sources gave no reason for the Chief Justice’s sudden resignation and exit from
the country.
This
reporter, who was at the Judiciary complex in Banjul yesterday to confirm the
resignation of Justice Fagbenle, saw his official vehicle, Judiciary 1A, parked
along with the vehicles of other judges at the parking lot, but the number
plate of the vehicle was replaced with a private number plate.
One
of the historic moments of Justice Fagbenle was his recent ruling on the motion
for an injunction to put on hold the 19 January 2017 the swearing in of the
then president-elect Adama Barrow who won the 1st December 2016 presidential
election.
The
Chief Justice failed to rule over the matter by recusing himself from hearing
the injunction, filed by the Alliance for Patriotic, Reorientation and
Construction party of the then incumbent president, Yahya Jammeh.
The
Judiciary had been at the epicenter of the legal wrangling that followed
Jammeh’s rejection of the result of the election, which he [Jammeh] lost to Mr
Barrow.
After
rejecting the result in its totality, Jammeh filed three petitions at the
Supreme Court, presided over by the Chief Justice, praying for the
nullification of the result and a new election.
The
Chief Justice told Jammeh’s lawyer during a session of the Supreme Court
that the petitions cannot be determined because the court lacks the number of
judges to constitute a panel to hear the cases.
Chief
Justice Fagbenle came to The Gambia to work at the Attorney General Chambers
and Ministry of Justice about 15 years ago, as member of the Nigerian Technical
Assistant Corps. He came together with
former Chief Justice Emmanuel A. Agim, Mrs Grace Mowo and Dr E. Olulana.
He
rose through the ranks, and became the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)
and then a judge of the High Court, where he presided over several civil and
criminal cases.
In
2012, he was appointed as a judge at the Court of Appeal and subsequently as a
Chief Justice in 2015, after his predecessor, Mabel Argyeman, was removed.
