Kunle Kalejaiye Appeals Against LPDC Verdict

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria disrobed on Thursday by the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee of the Body of Benchers, Kunle Kalejaiye, has asked the Supreme Court to rescind the decision.

The LPDC had stopped Kalejaiye from practising as a lawyer over professional misconduct.

A five-man panel of the LPDC, led by the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, had found Kalejaiye guilty of misconduct while representing the Peoples Democratic Party and its then candidate, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, at the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal where Oyinlola’s victory in the 2007 poll was being challenged by the then candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola.

Kalejaiye was said to have engaged in a “confidential, private and confidential telephone conversation” with the Chairman of the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, Justice Thomas Naron, without the knowledge of the other party.

However, in a notice of appeal filed on Friday by Kalejaiye’s counsel, Alex Izinyon, SAN, he averred that the committee misdirected itself in arriving at the decision to strike out his name from the roll of legal practitioners in Nigeria even after no witness gave evidence on behalf of the complainant.

While maintaining that there was no communication between him and the judge in question, Kalejaiye said “members of the committee misdirected themselves in law when they held that the defence of spoofing availed the appellant, (but) the failure of the appellant’s expert to demonstrate using MTN to MTN network instead of Glo to Airtel was fatal to the appellant’s defence of spoofing.”

He noted that it was during the demonstration of spoofing before the committee that two staff of the committee in the registry and sitting volunteered Glo and Airtel numbers respectively, adding that the two numbers were used by the “hacker” to call each other before the committee.

Kalejaiye also averred that the committee erred in law when it “held that the Certified True Copy of documents which contained call logs from computer generated source did not need any compliance with Section 84 of the Evidence Act once it has been certified.”

He noted further that what was certified was the proceeding of the court in Lagos which contained the call logs and that “the certification of the proceeding cannot appropriate or cover the computer generated call log used in the said proceeding.”

The appellant also averred that the committee acted contrary to the doctrine of fair hearing when it relied on the evidence of its own staff to arrive at its decision.

Based on the above, Izinyon said, “The committee is a committee and PW1 is a staff of the committee, who cannot double as a witness as this is against fair hearing.

“He is asking the Supreme Court for orders setting aside the order of the committee and restoring him back to the rank of a SAN as a legal practitioner in Nigeria.”