Lagos Attorney General did not accord Appeal court judgement deep consideration – NIWA

By Ezurike Ugochukwu

The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), has said that the Lagos state Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice might have read the Appeal court judgement in a haste or inadvertently did not accord the ruling deep consideration.

NIWA said this while faulting the assertions of Lagos Attorney General and Commissioner for Just, Moyosoro Onigbanjo, SAN, on the subsisting judgement of the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division on appeal number CA/L/886/2014, delivered on July 18, 2017.

NIWA therefore called on the Attorney General of Lagos state to carefully revisit the content of the judgment.

This is contained in a press release made public by NIWA in Lagos on Thursday.

The statement said according to Lagos attorney general, Justice Muktar JCA had stated in the lead judgement on the case that, “All other inland Waterways within Lagos State are within legislative competence of Lagos State House of Assembly(LHSA) and revenue therefrom accruable to Lagos Waterways Authority.”

Nothing, LHSA is competent to make laws in respect of same.

The release stated further that Onigbanjo had drawn the attention of NIWA to the assertions of the appeal court as the major plank to Lagos State government response to the letter written by Dr George Moghalu, Managing Director(MD), National Inland Waterways Authority, pleading to restrain Lagos legislators from ambushing its mandate by setting up committee to investigate dredging activities in the state, which Onigbanjo noted has the backing of the court of Appeal.

George Moghalu, the boss of NIWA noted that contrary to the assertions of Lagos State government that the Appeal court judgement favoured its regulation of the waterways, the court had in clear terms and without any ambiguoity stated and held on page 27 of the copious judgement that  items 5 in the second schedule to the NIWA Act is the relevant provision for the navigable route that falls under exclusive legislative list and it provides that the intra coastal route from Badagry, along the Badagry Creek to Lagos through Lagos lagoon to Iwopin along Omu River/Creek, Talifa kivel to Ajelete, Akata, Aboko, Oluwa River to Okitipipa and on Gbekebo, Arogbo, Ofunama Benin Creek to warri, Also the canal running from Araromi through Aiyetoro through Mahin lagoon to Igbokoda.

The MD further drew the attention of Lagos State government to the fact that the route run through International and states boundaries and therefore is consistent with the provisions of the constitution being items on the exclusive list and which the court of Appeal held.

The Appeal held that revenue accruable from the federal route is payable to federal Inland Waterways Authority.

NIWA boss flagged the empathic ruling of the Court of Appeal, and challenged lagos state government to furnish him with intra waterways which exists in Lagos, outside item 5, second schedule of the NIWA Act.

“To broaden the scope of the engagement, we noted with concern the very delibirate efforts of Lagos State government to over reach itself on Lagos lagoon which clearly is outside its legislative competence,” the report said.

It went on to request that Lagos government seek a second opinion on the true meaning of dredging which the Minerals Act defined as “sand mining,” an activity within the exclusive ambit of the federal government.

These positions stated Moghalu, becomes inevitable as areas in contention falls on the Court of Appeal declared route which did not confer any jurisdictional authority to Lagos State government.