FOI Act: Appeal Court Sets Aside Judgement Striking Out Suit Against CBN

The Federal High Court, which had rejected a lawsuit brought against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for refusing to respond to an application made under the Freedom of Information Act, 2021, has been set aside by the Court of Appeal Abuja.

Lawyers Network filed an appeal against the Federal High Court’s decision to dismiss its case against Corruption Ltd/GTE on May 26, 2023, citing the refusal to respond to an FOI request made to it by the CBN.

The appellant filed the lawsuit through a request for judicial review, alleging that CBN had declined to comply with its request to provide the public with the list of demonetized coins’ physical stocks as of July 8, 2017, and 17th of March, 2017.

The appellant asserts that requesting judicial review of a decision by a competent institution, such as the CBN, is not required by law.

The request for the demonetized coins that were available as of March 17 and July 18th, 2020 was denied by Justice Okon Abang, who delivered the unanimous decision of a three-member panel of justices of the appellate court.

He argued that the appellant is not required to follow any legal procedure by Section 21 of the FOI Act before submitting an application for judicial review of the CBN’s decision to reject its application.

Is this my opinion, and in light of Section 21 of the FOI Act, the appellant is not required to obtain prior permission before asking the court to review a competent institution’s decision to refuse to release the information the appellant requested. I so hold.

The appellant must establish no conditional precedent before asking the court to review a decision by an institution that won’t take action on the request for information.

There should be no obstacles to the appellant’s ability to request judicial review in accordance with Section 21 of the Act. According to Justice Abang, the lawmakers’ goals are to prevent any delay or material obstruct the timely and timely hearing of applications submitted under the FOI Act.

According to him, there should be no restrictions or bottlenecks of any kind when it comes to requests for judicial review under the FOI Act. For instance, if an applicant is denied a request by a public institution, the applicant should have free and automatic access to a court of law within the time frame permitted by Section 20 of the Act.

According to Abang, the applicant has the right to file a court request within the meaning of Section 20 of the Act, and there is a chance of breaking the 30-day deadline set forth in Section 20 of the Act.

He claimed that the appellant must meet no prerequisites before making an application for judicial review, adding that “the purpose of the lawmakers’ provision for automatic hearing in FOI Act cases is to make sure that nothing prevents the applicant from submitting his application within the 30-day deadline provided for by Section 20 of the Act.”

Source: Channels TV