Chief Wole Olanipekun, CFR, OFR, SAN, has told the Supreme Court that applications for leave to appeal filed at the Court of Appeal are not being heard, and that the decision of the Supreme Court said to prevent them from being heard decided nothing of the sort.
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He was delivering the address of the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria at the special session of the Court marking the commencement of the 2026/2027 legal year.
He raised the matter after pressing the Supreme Court on consistency and precedent.
“It is worthy of note that within the past one year, the perception or complaint of inconsistency in the decisions of the Supreme Court has abated. We want to appreciate your Lordships for this, because certainty of law is so important. Not just important, my Lord, it is imperative.”
“But if we may ask: this improvement that we are witnessing, we want it, we are pleading, BOSAN is pleading, that it should percolate to the lower courts.”
“Jurisprudence is based on precedent, and no judge has the right to create his or her own jurisprudence outside precedent. The Supreme Court does not do that, and in this address we have highlighted the fact that it is only the Supreme Court that has the right to re-evaluate, to review, to set aside, to moderate its previous decisions. The Court of Appeal does not. The lower court does not.”
“A system whereby lower courts will not apply decisions of the Supreme Court and be bound by them, my Lord, we want to say it is not a situation that we should continue to encourage.”
“My Lord, we have this problem in our hands in the hearing of applications.”
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“Applications to the Court of Appeal: when an appeal is filed and an application for leave to appeal is filed before the Court of Appeal, what we have there today is that those applications are not taken. They are not taken.”
“On the pretext, on the ground, on the excuse that there is a decision of the Supreme Court to the effect that they cannot take that application.”
“My Lord, we have referenced that decision of the Supreme Court, with all respect to the Court of Appeal, to the registry of the Court of Appeal. That is not what that decision decided.”
“We want to plead, my Lord. It is a conundrum. We want to plead that something be done, and that your Lordship the Honourable the Chief Justice of Nigeria should look into it.”
“We have [scores] of applications at the Court of Appeal, and all lawyers here [know] that we have been directed by the registry that we should not [bring] applications for leave to appeal.”
“I am not aware that there is any decision of this Court to that effect.”
He went on to describe what he understood the underlying question to be: the propriety of filing an application for leave to appeal at the appellate court before the time for appealing has expired, or where the lower court has not first considered and refused the application.
“That even in that type of application, we should first of all go to the Court of Appeal, not directly coming to the Supreme Court. That has not been the [position].”
“And we want both my Lord and the President of the Court of Appeal to look into this.”
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