TB Joshua to be arraigned in court today

olamide oni

November 30, 2015 9:30 AM

The church Trustees will be arraigned today.

Prophet TB Joshua arraigned over church collapse

Members of the Trustees of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, SCOAN, will be arraigned in court today, November 30, over the church building collapse.

Prophet T. B. Joshua, senior pastor of the church, is also a member of the board of Trustees.

According to Vanguard Reports, Joshua and other Trustee members will be arraigned before the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja over the collapse of a six-storey building in the church on September 12, 2014, which led to the death of 116 persons.

The engineers, who constructed the building will also be in court before Justice Lawal Akapo.

The arraignment was confirmed in a statement by Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the Lagos State Minstry of Justice, Bola Akingbade.

Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court in Lagos had dismissed the fundamental human rights enforcement suits filed by the engineers who constructed the collapsed six-storey building to stop their planned trial.

The engineers— Mr. Oladele Ogundeji and Mr. Akinbela Fatiregun—had filed two separate suits before Justice Buba seeking an order restraining the police from inviting, arresting or prosecuting them over the victims’ death.

A Coroner Inquest had been set up on August 7, 2015 to figure out what caused the building collapse which led to the indictment of the engineers and the court recommended them for investigation and prosecution for criminal negligence.

The engineers had filed the suits following the Coroner’s verdict, which attributed the building collapse to structural defect.

The engineers had specifically rejected the Coroner’s verdict, describing it as “unreasonable, one-sided and biased.”

But Justice Buba, in his ruling on the defendants’ preliminary objection, held that the engineers “had not made out a case of infringement on their fundamental rights even on the merit of the application,” and dismissed their applications.

olamide oni