DDC machines
A Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday refused to vacate its interim order, restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission from awarding contract for the importation of the Direct Data Capturing Machines.
In his ruling on the application by the lawyer to the Attorney General of the Federation, Dame Carol Ajie, asking him to discharge the order, Justice Ibrahim Auta held that he would deliver a ruling on December 17 on whether or not to vacate the order.
Arguing the application to discharge the order, Ajie told the court that the order was issued in vain on the grounds that the act which the court wished to stop had already been completed as at the time the order was made.
Auta order stopped INEC from carrying out any activities relating to the voter registration, following an ex parte application by Bedding Holdings Limited, but Ajie had told the judge that the plaintiff misled the court into granting the order.
She said, “It was well known to the plaintiff that the order sought was to stop a completed act. That it is too late in the day to restrain an act that has been completed.”
According to her, INEC and the nation would suffer insurmountable distress and irreparable damages and huge losses, not capable of being quantified in terms of costs, should the plaintiff and its agents persist in their harassing conduct aimed at disrupting the 2011 April general election.
The company had dragged INEC; its chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega; the Attorney-General of the Federation and three companies, Haier Electrical Appliances Corporation Ltd, Zinox Technologies Ltd and Avante International Technology Incorporated, before the court, alleging that it was the only company with the patent right to produce Electronic Collapsible Transparent Ballox Boxes, as well as the patentee in respect of Proof of Address System/Scheme, used for the collation and collection of the names, age, sex, address, finger print, geographical description and location of various places in the country, including the bio-data of every person resident in Nigeria.
Also, in another case a Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday fixed January 14 for its ruling in the preliminary objection by INEC against a suit by a firm, Technocrat Consult and IT Systems Limited.
Justice Okechukwu Okeke had fixed the date following the adoption of written addresses on the matter by the lawyers to the parties.
The plaintiff is challenging its exclusion from the award of DDC contract on the grounds that it invented a technique -portable telecommunication device used in biometric identification of the DDC machines, saying that it owned the patent right No RP: NG/P/2010/283 on the invention.
Lawyer to Technocrat Consult, Mr. Norrison Quakers, had filed the action while the plaintiff also joined the beneficiaries of the contract - Zinox Technologies Limited, Haier Electrical Appliances Corporation and Avante International Technology Inc. - as co-defendants to the suit and demanded N8bn damages.
But arguing the preliminary objection against the suit on Monday, lawyer to INEC, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), urged the court not to grant any declarative injunction against INEC, saying that such a development would affect preparation for the 2011 general elections.
Awomolo also argued that the court lacked the jurisdiction to adjudicate on the matter
Source: Punch
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