By Evarist Baimu Nyaga Mawalla - Home

31. (1985) At p. 3532. One of the papers delivered between 20 th to 25 th October, 1986 when theFaculty of Law of University of Dar es Salaam celebrated its Silver Jubilee, atp.2633. (1966) E.A 514(Sir Udo Udoma, C.J).34. (1970) E.A. 162 (U) (Jones, Ag. C.J).Adopted then narrow approach as indicated by two cases: first the Nigerian Union ofJournalist vs. A.G of Nigeria 35 and second is the case of Wang vs.Chief of Staff SupremeHeadquarters Lagos. 36 The ouster clause under section 1 of the Decree No 13 of 1984provided.(1) No civil proceedings shall lie or be instituted in any court for or onaccount of or in respect of any act, matter or thing done or purported to bedome under or pursuant to any Decree or Edict and if any suchproceedings are instituted before on or after the commencement of thisDecree, the proceedings shall abate, be discharged and make void.In the first case a trade union of Journalists sought to challenge as unconstitutional adecree, which curtailed freedom of expression. The High court granted the applicationbut an appeal Nnaemeka – Ag. J.C.A held that“It is one thing to say that a court has no jurisdiction to hear a case andquite another to say that, that court has no jurisdiction to inquire or determinewhether or not what is before him is within the contemplation of the provisions ofthe ousting legislation.In my opinion the learned Judge having held the he had jurisdiction to make theinitial inquiry as to whether what was before him were matters within thecontemplation of the above Decrees, should have come to the conclusion that hisjurisdiction has been completely ousted.”And in the latter case the applicant sought to challenge by way of habeas corpus adetention order issued under the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree, 1984 37 asof habeas corpus saying its jurisdiction had been ousted. On appeal Ademola, J.C.A.agreed, stating that to constitute an “ouster of jurisdiction” the words used must be suchas to affect and deal with entertaining of the action as opposed to words dealing witheffect of a decision given in an action. And according to him the ouster clause in this caseconcerned the entertaining of an action. It was pointed out that a tribunal statutory body isallowed to make errors within its jurisdiction.125