By Brave Dickson
Justice Kolawole Omotosho of a federal high court in Port Harcourt on Thursday delivered judgement against the University of Port Harcourt for violating the right of a Port Harcourt based journalist, Mark Lenu as enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act, 2011.
The court therefore ordered the school to give Lenu the information he earlier asked for within seven days with effect from the day of the judgement and also mandated the attorney general of the federation who is the 3rd defendant in the suit to compel UNIPORT to comply with the judgement.
The court also dismissed the issue of locus standi raised by UNIPORT against the plaintiff (Lenu) maintaining that the plaintiff has the legal right to challenge the school in court despite not being a student of the school.
Speaking with our correspondent, lawyer to the plaintiff, Barr Kingdom Chukwuezie thanked the court for delivering the judgement in favour of his client, saying that the court has established the right of all citizens to request information from public institutions.
He said: “This is a landmark judgement because it has reaffirmed the position of the court and the law to affirm the right of citizens to access information from public institutions.
“And the court has clearly given effect and interpretation to this law via the FOI suit filed by Mark Lenu.
“The plaintiff in this suit had sought and asked for certain information relating to funds received by UNIPORT from its students running industrial scheme programmes.
“The school refused to give him the information sought for notwithstanding the provisions of the FOI Act.
“The plaintiff then approached the court asking whether the refusal was right or wrong and the court agreed with the plaintiff granting all the reliefs he has sought.
“The court said the university has no right to deny him of such information and faulted the school for not communicating its grounds of refusal to the plaintiff.”
