Pauline Tallen Challenges Judgment Over ‘Kangaroo’ Comments

Former Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Pauline Tallen, has filed 13 grounds before the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, to challenge the judgement of the Federal Capital Territory High Court in respect of the “Kangaroo” public comments she made over a Federal High Court decision.

The 22-page notice of appeal was filed on her behalf by the law firm of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Joe-Kyari Gadzama.

Tallen in the notice of appeal dated December 29, 2023, challenged the whole decision of Justice Peter Kekemeke delivered on Dec. 18th in favour of the Incorporated Trustees of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

In that judgment, the Court declared that Tallen’s statement was unconstitutional, careless, reckless, disparaging, a call to disobey the judgment of the court, and therefore contemptuous of the Federal High Court of Nigeria.

Justice Kekemeke also granted among other reliefs an injunction restraining her from holding any public office in Nigeria, unless she purges herself of the ignoble conduct by publishing a personally signed apology letter to Nigerians and the Judiciary in two Newspapers.

The Court ordered that the injunction restraining the defendant from holding any public office in Nigeria shall become perpetual if she fails to abide by the order directing her to publish an apology letter within 30 days.

But in ground one of her notice of appeal challenging the judgment, the former minister said that the trial court misdirected itself in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice when it held contrary to a decision of a Supreme Court that a lawyer cannot depose to an affidavit in respect of a matter he participated in.

Amongst other grounds, the former minister also said that the trial judge wrongly relied on Section 1 (3) and/or Section 3(1) of the NBA Constitution in deciding that the association possessed the requisite locus standi to institute the action against her especially as it was not a party in the suit before the Federal High Court which judgment she referred to as a kangaroo judgment.

She wants the Court of Appeal to set aside the trial court’s decision, uphold her preliminary objection to the NBA Suit, and dismiss the judgment of Justice Kekemeke while awarding cost.

In December 2022, the Incorporated Trustees of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) took out an originating summons against Dame Pauline Tallen over her public comments made in respect of the judgment of the Federal High Court in Suit No. FHC/YL/12/2022 between Mallam Nuhu Ribadu v. All Progressives Congress (APC) & 2 Ors delivered on 14 October 2022.

Tallen had on the 15th of October, 2022 described the court decision as “a kangaroo judgment that should be rejected by well-meaning Nigerians”.

By a letter dated 14 November 2022, the NBA President, Mr. Yakubu Chonoko Maikyau, OON, SAN had written to the former minister demanding her to withdraw the said disparaging comments and tender an unreserved and public apology to the Court, failing which the NBA would institute an action against her as being unfit to continue to hold any public office in Nigeria.

She did not respond to the letter prompting the NBA to institute a suit against her before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

On the 18th day of December 2023, the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory found in favour of the Incorporated Trustees of the NBA and against the defendant, Pauline Tallen.