Professor Chidi Anselm Odinkalu has urged judges to keep out of the dispute in the Nigerian Bar Association, Owerri Branch, after a proposal circulated within the profession that a fundamental rights action be filed in Imo State to restrain Thursday’s rescheduled Extraordinary General Meeting of the Branch.
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In a post on X, Professor Odinkalu wrote:
“In this matter of @NigBarAssoc Owerri Branch & the N100 million #GreekGift from the government of @Hope_Uzodimma1, the people who got the money & those who gave it to them are now acting & thinking desperate. That is never a good sign.”
“The judges whom they are desperately trying to inveigle into enabling these desperations should please steer clear & allow them to impale [themselves] voluntarily.”
He named no judge, no court and no application.
The post followed two WhatsApp status messages circulated on Sunday morning, both timed at 9.06 a.m., setting out an argument that the Association cannot deliberate on the matter and that the meeting can be stopped by court order.
The first set out the reasoning:
“I have advised and will again advise that in view of the manifest bias, hostility generated by Chinedu Agu’s allegations, the tension on NBA platforms with almost everyone taking a position, battle lines drawn, it will be difficult to have objective discussion on the issue.”
“Most importantly, the allegations are criminal in nature. So by the provisions of Section 36(4) of the constitution, only the security agencies and the courts can inquire into it. The matter is already before the EFCC, so NBA can no longer deliberate on it until EFCC concludes and issues it’s report.”
“On the above grounds, a fundamental rights action seeking to enforce the right to fair hearing will succeed faster.”
The text of the first status is cut off at that point in the material available to this publication.
The second message adopted the reasoning and took it to its conclusion:
“I agree with this reasoning that in the light of the pendency of the matter before the EFCC and issues joined in the agency by both Chinedu and Agu, the NBA cannot deliberate on d subject matter but must await the outcome of the report by the Anti graft agency.”
“In that case, a FRA can be filed in any court in Imo state to get an injunction to restrain d rescheduled Thursday meeting.”
The Extraordinary General Meeting in question was requisitioned by 183 financial members of the Branch, who transmitted their requisition to the Chairman on 2 October 2026 and relied on Article 11(5) of the NBA Uniform Bye-Law for Branches in fixing the meeting themselves.
It was first scheduled for Saturday, 10 October. On that day Senior Advocates of Nigeria, former Branch Chairmen and Secretaries and other members found the gate to the Magistrates’ Court premises housing the NBA Owerri Bar Centre padlocked, with about eighteen police officers deployed around it and the regular gate security absent. Access was refused on the strength of an oral directive said to have been given on Wednesday, 7 October by the Chief Registrar of the High Court of Imo State that the premises were not to be opened at weekends.
A former Chairman of the Branch, Mr. Dec Madu, announced at the gate that the meeting would be rescheduled for Thursday, 15 October 2026.
The dispute arises from a petition by a past Secretary of the Branch, Mr. Chinedu Agu, inviting the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to investigate the N100,000,000.00 released to the Branch by the Imo State Government on 24 August 2026, and from the Chairman’s reply of 5 October denying any misappropriation, diversion, conversion or personal use of any part of it and asking the Commission to trace every Branch account from inception.
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