The children of late Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Alhaji Muhammed Sani Omolori, have dragged their brother and former Clerk of the National Assembly, Mohammed Ataba Sani-Omolori, before a Gudu Upper Area Court in Abuja over property tussle.
While Ataba Omolori is a defendant in the suit, the late monarch’s children are the plaintiff, Blueprint Newspaper has reported.
The said properties worth N7 billion are located in Maitama, Katampe, and Mabushi districts of the Federal Capital Territory.
Ataba, the late monarch’s eldest son was dragged to the court over an allegation that he fraudulently sold off the properties in question.
Consequently, the matter was dragged before an Upper Area court in Gudu, Abuja presided over by a Judge, Ado Mukhtar.
But for the Judge’s absence, the resumed hearing on Wednesday was supposed to be for adoption of Ataba’s preliminary objection and complainant’s reply.
The Judge is said to have resumed his annual vacation.
Counsel representing the plaintiff, Abdullahi Awwal Muhammad, confirmed told Blueprint that the said preliminary objection by the defendant borders on the court jurisdiction to hear the matter.
He nevertheless frowned at an attempt by the defendants to frustrate the proceedings.
Meanwhile, January 30, 2023 has been fixed for adoption of preliminary objection and reply of the same by the plaintiff’s counsel.
Recall that one of the late Monarch’s children, Buhari Sani Omolori had accused his elder brother of selling off the properties in contention.
Some of the properties are said to be located in the Maitama, Katampe, and Mabushi districts of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Buhari in an interview, revealed that the Omolori family carried out investigations and found that the monarch’s eldest son, Ataba, allegedly stole original documents of the properties barely eight days after their father’s death and sold them without consulting his siblings or sharing the benefits with them.
He said no fewer than 12 offspring of the late monarch have died from illnesses that could have been treated if they were financially afloat or their legitimate inheritances had not been taken away from them.
Buhari said when the family first discovered that Ataba was in possession of the documents, the family reached out to him to amicably resolve how to share the properties amongst the beneficiaries of the late monarch.
“We wrote some letters within the family concerning the properties, in which we reached out to (one of) our eldest brothers, Alhaji Isah.
“Then he told us that all these properties, especially the ones in Abuja, were in the hands of Ataba (Mohammed Ataba Sani-Omolori) who was the Clerk of the National Assembly and our eldest brother.
“He (Alhaji Isah) said he had reached out to him in the past that he should bring the properties so that they can be shared and he (Ataba) said he was holding it for the family. His response is even documented in a letter but it is being kept within the family. So, after this, he became very dodgy and at this point, we had not seen the documents.”
Buhari, however, recalled going through “our father’s stuff and I saw his papers about his landed properties and all of that. I made it clear that I’ve seen these properties (and) said that If anyone knows anything about this property, such a person should let us know because we were going to investigate.
“So, in the course of investigations, everything was linked to him (Ataba). Then we held a family meeting sometime in November last year (2021). In the family, one of our brothers was working with AGIS (Abuja Geographic Information System) and somebody said look, tell us what happened. The one in AGIS now said that look, these properties were owned by our father at some point but our brother, Ciroma (Ataba), who was the Clerk of the National Assembly, has sold them and they’ve passed from one hand to another. This was in a meeting in November last year,” he said.
