The Caretaker Committee of the Balogun Business Association at the Lagos International Centre of Commerce (ICC) (a.k.a. Trade Fair Complex) has advised its members, stakeholders, affiliates and esteemed customers to remain calm and law-abiding while the Committee is handling what it called the “toxic and obnoxious shenanigans of fifth columnists who are bent on destabilizing the ICC and the Association”.

According to members of the committee, on Wednesday, November 22, 2023, an unseemly event occurred when the duo of Mr. Alex Obi-Odunukwe and Mr. Oscar Odogwu reportedly broke into the shopping complex with the aim of enforcing an alleged order or judgment of court.

In a public notice sent to members, affiliates and stakeholders of BBA soon after the purported take over, the Caretaker Committee (CTC) Chairman and the Secretary Hon (Chief) Anslem Dunu and Chief Leonard Ogbonnia respectively, on behalf of the CTC drew the attention of all, to the fact that Alex Obi-Odunukwe and Oscar Odogwu’s invasion of the Shopping Complex was fraudulently contrived as they latched on stale and illegitimate lawsuits in which neither Balogun Business Association nor its members were parties, either in its plain name or its corporate or registered association.

The public notice also stated that neither the incumbent Caretaker Committee nor any of its members were parties to the “abusive and contemptuous lawsuits”.

It added that Alex Obi-Odunukwe and Oscar Odogwu, ostensibly consumed and propelled “by a combustible mix of inordinate ambition and desperation have done the unthinkable by brazenly misinforming and manipulating both the Court and the Nigeria Police Force to levy execution of a purported judgment against Balogun Business Association, the Caretaker Committee of the Association and members of the Caretaker Committee who are not parties to the contemptuous lawsuits”.

According to the CTC, “To make matters worse, the two desperado and their confederates who claim to have been ‘elected” as members of a phantom ‘executive council’ of their own imagination at an hotel in Mile 2, Lagos, their illegitimate lawsuit was wangled by them and unleashed on the court after the Federal High Court had, specifically in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/579/2021 (Incorporated Trustees of Balogun Business Association & Others Versus Inspector General of Police & others) and Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/451/2021(Incorporated Trustees of Balogun Business Association & Others Versus Corporate Affairs Commission & Others) made orders, decisions and pronouncements which effectively invalidated and nullified the comedy of errors that masqueraded as “elections’ at Villa Park Hotel.”

The CTC declared that the two suits and the orders, decisions and pronouncements made by the Federal High Court predated the now infamous and contemptuous lawsuit of Alex Obi-Odunukwe and Oscar Odogwu and their confederates and the orders, decisions and pronouncements of the Federal High Court in the aforementioned two Suits No. FHC/ABJ/CS/579/2021 and No. FHC/ABJ/CS/451/2021 are still subsisting.

The CTC further stated that the two suits even came up before the Federal High Court on Monday 20th November, 2023 and have further been adjourned by the court to the 19th December, 2023.

The Committee has therefore advised its members to ignore the antics of Alex Obi-Odunukwe and Oscar Odogwu as the Association and the incumbent CTC are backed and sustained not only by the subsisting orders, decisions and pronouncements in the two aforementioned Suits at the Federal High Court but by subsisting judgement by the Lagos State High Court in Suit No. LD/5458GCMW) 2018.

The CTC has similarly advised all its members, affiliates and stakeholders not to enter into any contractual relationship with “the two renegades” or their representatives as they do not represent Balogun Business Association.

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