Appeal Court Adjourns Hearing in Suit Challenging Odemo of Isara’s Coronation

The Ibadan Division of the Court of Appeal yesterday adjourned hearing in an appeal filed against the selection and coronation of Odemo of Isara Remo, Ogun State, Oba Albert Mayungbe, till January 25, 2023.

A co-contestant to the throne, Prince Samuel Odunsi, had dragged the monarch; Secretary, Remo North Local Government; eight chiefs; Ogun State governor; Commissioner for Local Government and Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice to an Ogun State High Court, challenging Mayungbe’s selection and coronation.

He said the monarch’s selection was in error because he was an Odi by ancestry. Odi in Isara are those whose ancestral parents did not originate from the town, though they may have mixed with indigenes, including princes and princesses for centuries.

But the Ogun State High Court sitting in Sagamu dismissed the suit in a judgment delivered on March 29, 2018, insisting that Mayungbo was qualified and properly nominated for the throne.

Displeased with the decision of the court, Odunsi filed an appeal against the judgment at the Court of Appeal in Ibadan, seeking an order setting aside the lower court’s decision.

Odunsi, in his eight grounds of appeal, argued that the lower court erred in law in formulating and deciding on issues that were not implicated in parties’ pleadings on the custom and tradition of Remo land and those of Isara

He argued that the lower court erred by according credence to Mayungbe’s evidence and his witnesses at the expense of his own evidence, which he said was “incontrovertible,” being the position of the Akarigbo of Remo land.