The National Industrial Court in Abuja has affirmed Tajudeen Baruwa as the legally elected president of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).

Giving the judgment on the leadership crisis rocking the union on Monday, the presiding judge, Justice O. O. Oyewumi, sacked the Tajudeen Agbede-led Chairman Caretaker Committee.

The judge restrained the former president of the union, Najeem Yasin, also the chairman of the Board of Trustees, from interfering in NURTW’s affairs. It ruled that Mr Yasin could act as the board chairman.

Justice Oyewumi also held that the Quadrennial National Delegate Conference, which took place on August 23, 2023, at Ta’aL Hotels, Lafia, Nasarawa State, where the president and other national officers emerged and were inaugurated, was valid.

The judge, therefore, declared that the national delegates conference held on October 25, 2023, that produced the acting president, Isa Ore, and his National Administrative Council was illegal, null and void.

She explained that there was no evidence of a crisis in the union; the invocation of the ‘doctrine of necessity’, which led to the constitution of the caretaker committee, had no basis.

The crisis in the union started after the zonal delegates conference held across the six zonal councils of the union on May 24, 2023, which produced Mr Baruwa as the president for a second term.

Musiliu Akinsanya, aka MC Oluomo of the defunct Lagos State Park Management Committee, on August 28, 2023, violently attacked the national officers and staff members of the union and took over the secretariat at Garki 2, Abuja, in the presence of armed security agents deployed to provide security.

On September 13, 2023, Mr Baruwa and four other national officers were arrested and detained at the former office of the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in Abuja.