Lawyer petitions chief judge over alleged missing court document

An Aba-based lawyer, Nnanna Ukaegbu, has petitioned the state Chief Judge, Lilian Abai, over an alleged missing document in an ongoing court suit at a State High court in Aba.

Mr Ukaegbu is a joint litigant in the suit, marked No: A/175/2007, with Lynn Ijioma and Anor Versus Abara Ijioma and six others, pending before Justice Innocent Nwabughiogu of State High Court, Aba.

The lawyer asked Justice Nwabughiogu to recuse himself from the suit pending the investigation of his complaints against him.

He said he resolved to petition the chief judge “because of the need for the stream of justice to remain unpolluted”.

Mr Ukaegbu said the first to fourth defendants in the suit, on 9 May, served a motion on his counsel, which was captured in the court’s record of proceedings.

He further said the defendants’ counsel called his lawyer on 10 May to inform him that their earlier motion contained a mistake, which required another motion to correct it.

“On 14 May, the said first to fourth defendants served the second motion on my counsel.

“What was, however, shocking is that the filing date of the motion is 8 May, which is two days before the conception of the application.

“I applied for the certified true copy, and the High Court registrar gave it to me, but there was no more copy of the exhibit, which is the earlier motion, in the case file,” Mr Ukaegbu stated.

He further stated that his lawyer had drawn the attention of the court to the missing exhibit from the court record.

He, therefore, urged the chief judge “to institute an investigation on how the exhibit was tampered with and found missing from the record of the court.”

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The lawyer asked: “Who tampered with the case file? Who pilfered the file copy of a process duly filed and served?

“Are there no administrative consequences for the unlawful removal of documents from the court’s file?”

He emphasised the need to investigate the complaint since, according to him, several previous tamperings with his processes were found in the same court file, which he claimed to have overlooked.

(NAN)