Justice Evoh Chukwu of a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has told the Federal Ministry of Power to maintain status quo in the award of contract for the supply and installation of over three million electric prepaid metres.
The order was made by the court following a request by a firm, Ziklagsis Networks Limited, for an order of the court to stop the ministry from further awarding the contract to other companies other than the firms it entered into a Tripartite Agreement with.
The Federal Government and Ziklagsis entered into a contract for the production, supply, installation and maintenance of Prepaid Electricity Metres.
Apart from the Ministry of Power, other defendants in the matter are the Federal Government, the Attorney-General of the Federation, the Debt Management Office and Skye Bank.
Before the order to maintain status quo antebellum was granted by the court, the firm, through Chief Wole Olanipenkun (SAN), who led Okpefeyi Oladepo (SAN), Ahmed Raji (SAN), A.A. Usman and Bayo Majekolade, asked the court to determine whether having regards to the letter of Award/Revalidation of Tripartite Agreement with the Federal Government for the supply of 3,315,820 electric prepaid metres, the Federal Government, the Ministry of Power and the AGF, who are 1st to 3rd defendants in the matter, are not stopped from changing, altering and revoking the award/agreement after taking steps and incurred expenses on the supply of the prepaid metres.
In the affidavit in support of the originating summons deposed to by Jones Listowel, the Managing Director of the firm, the firm said it entered into $196,835,396.02 contract agreement with the Federal Government for the production, supply, installation of Prepaid Electricity Metres in 2003.
Listowel said his firm went ahead to supply about 40,000 PPMs at its own expense.
Listowel said the Federal Government breached the agreement by failing to pay for the PPMs already supplied under the agreement.
He accused the Ministry of Power of plans to divert the contract as well as the contract sum in favour of other persons, company or institution other than his firm.
He said the ministry’s wilful refusal to release the money due to the plaintiff is done in utter bad faith and intended to frustrate his company with the ultimate aim of cancelling the contract.
No date has been fixed for the hearing of the case.