Court Directs NCC To Restore APC Fund-raising Platform

The Federal High Court in Lagos on Wednesday restrained five telecoms firms from suspending All Progressives Congress (APC) campaign fund-raising platform.
Justice Ibrahim Buba made the ex-parte order following the party’s motion.

The judge made an order of interim injunction restraining Etisalat, MTN, Glo, Airtel and Visafone from giving effect to a directive by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), that warned them against running political promotions that will portray them as being partisan.

The judge ordered the telecoms firms “to continue to run, operate and/or restore to its full operative use of the SMS Code platform 35350 created for fund-raising for the APC applicant’s presidential campaign.”

The orders are to subsist pending the hearing and determination of APC’s originating motion on notice. The court also granted APC leave to serve the originating motion on notice and other processes on NCC (the first defendant) outside the court’s jurisdiction.

The APC says the platform is to operate till February 12 when campaign activities for the presidential election will end in line with Electoral Act and the election time-table. In the originating motion, APC is demanding N25billion damages from the defendants for violating the fundamental rights of the party and its members.

It said since the platform was suspended, it has been unable to disseminate or receive information from its supporters via the SMS code 35350. The party said while the platform was suspended, NCC has allowed that of President Goodluck Jonathan to run seamlessly.

The party said it created a “premium SMS code 35350? through which willing donors could contribute to its presidential campaign fund. Within hours of its creation, APC said it was getting about five messages of N100 each every minute. A total of 5,400 messages were received, it said.

However, NCC in a January 19 letter, directed all telecoms service providers “to avoid running political advertisements that will portray them as being partisan.” NCC said it would “not hesitate to sanction any service provider that will flout this directive.” As a result, the telecoms firms suspended the platform.

However, APC said political parties have been using several media platforms to advertise, with none accused of being partisan.