Stella Oduah wins in court as bid for FOI on her cars fails

by Godwin Akanfe

The Federal High Court in Lagos has struck out the Freedom of Information suit filed by the trustees of the Media Rights Agenda (MRA), which wanted to know about the controversial armoured BMW cars purchased on behalf of former minister, Stella Oduah, during her tenure in office.

In a letter dated October 21, 2013, the MRA had asked the court to compel the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and the Minister of Justice to disclose information on the procurement of the controversial BMW cars.

The letter had requested for the NCAA’s annual budget, the public procurement plans, procurement record for the purchase of two BMW 760 LI vehicles, evidence of advertisements to that effect, a list of bids tendered, copies of bid evaluation meetings, pro forma invoice of those documents as well as documents showing delivery of procured vehicles among other things. MRA insisted that the information requested for, apart from not being exempted from disclosure under the FOI Act, borders on an issue of national interest, public concern, social justice, good governance, transparency and accountability.

The NCAA, on its part, said that the applicants did not meet up with certain condition precedent before instituting an action against the respondents. NCAA also said that the FOI applications failed to issue the 30 days notice required by section 24(2) of the Civil Aviation Act 2006 among other objections.

Justice Ibrahim Buba, in his decision, ruled that the information requested went outside the contemplation of the Freedom of Information Act. He also held that the requested information is a published material that falls under the exception stated in section 26(a) of the Freedom of Information Act and that the budgetary allocation for the referred procurement process was contained in the 2013 budget of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

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