By Brave Dickson
A federal high court presided over by Justice Kolawole Omotosho in Port Harcourt has ordered the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH) to within seven days furnish a Port Harcourt-based Journalist, Mark Lenu with the information he applied for.
The plaintiff, Lenu had requested for salary information among others from the hospital but was denied of such information.
Giving details of the litigation between the parties, lawyer to the plaintiff, Barr Kingdom Chukwuezie said: “The matter is essentially within the confines of the Freedom of Information Act, 2011.
“Pursuant to that Act and the rights therein, the plaintiff had applied for some information especially in respect to the allocations received by the UPTH from the federal government regarding staff salaries and allowances in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
“My client requested further for the unspent amount remitted to the federal government from the allocations it received during the said years.
“Finally, he requested for the list of names of all the consultants and medical doctors working with the UPTH.
“He told the hospital in his application that he was willing to pay the prescribed standard charge for the production of the aforementioned information.
“By the Act, the hospital is by law required to make such information available to him within seven days.
“Or in the alternative, where the law had given reasons as to why the information can not be made available, the hospital should in advance write my client personally stating reasons why the information he had sought for can not be made available.
“But the hospital refused to make the information available to him.
“So, my client went to court and among several reliefs, prayed the court to determine whether the hospital was right to have withheld the information sought by him.
“And to further determine whether the failure by the hospital to make the information available within seven days as required by law was in violation of his right or not.
“The court in its judgement found that my client has established and proven his case, adding that the information denied him by the hospital infringed on his right as a citizen of Nigeria.
“The court ordered the hospital to make available the information to him within seven days.
“That the information should be made available to him via hard copy in accordance with his prayers and also via his email.”
