The Synagogue Church of All Nations has filed an appeal against an Ikeja High Court ruling which dismissed its application to stop the ongoing coroner’s inquest into its collapsed guest house.
The counsel to the church, Oluwaseun Abimbola, disclosed this on Thursday at the resumption of the inquest presided over by Oyetade Komolafe.
Following the dismissal of the application to stop the inquest, Komolafe had asked Abimbola to pick a date for Joshua’s appearance before the inquest.
Responding, Abimbola told the coroner that an appeal had already been filed against the ruling at the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the inquest was set up by the Lagos State Government to investigate the September 12, 2014 building collapse, which killed 116 people, mainly South Africans.
However, the church and its founder, Prophet Temitope Joshua, had dragged Komolafe before Justice Lateefa Okunnu, asking the superior court to halt the inquest.
Delivering her ruling on March 6, Okunnu held that the application was premature and lacking in merit.
The judge, who relied on the works of Christopher Dorries, a British coroner’s law expert, held that the Coroner’s Court was inquisitorial in nature.
Okunnu said Sections 26 and 27 of the Coroner’s System Law of Lagos State, 2007, empowered the coroner to summon any witness to assist him in his fact-finding mission.
According to her, the summons extended to Joshua to testify was not unusual because he was listed in the applicant’s affidavit as the “Founder and General Overseer” of the church.
She also dismissed the allegation that Komolafe had been biased against the applicants in the proceedings as there was no evidence before the court to support the claim.
Komolafe had held that a coroner had the prerogative to take evidence from any witness he deemed relevant to reaching his conclusions.
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