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By Omoniyi Salaudeen
A coalition of Ijaw interest groups has called on the Federal Government to abide by the ruling of the Federal High Court sitting in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital, which granted an injunction restraining it from taking further action on the award of marginal oil licences pending the conclusion of the suit before it.
A concerned High Chief Philip Brown Agu and two others on behalf of themselves and Ijaw Ethnic Nationality had in a suit no: FHC/YNG/CS/81/2020 dated November 11, 2020, prayed the Federal High Court to, among other things, restrain the Minister of Petroleum Resources and the Federal Government from giving out/approving licences in respect of marginal fields listed pending the hearing and determination of the case.
The presiding judge, Hon Justice Isa H. Dashen, ruling on the matter, ordered the defendant to restrain “from giving out/approving licences in respect of marginal fields listed pending the hearing and determination of this suit.”
A letter signed by the Secretary of the Ijaw Elders Forum (IEF), Pastor Efiye Bribena, on behalf of the coalition groups, therefore, urged the parties involved to abide by the ruling of the court. “It is our expectation that all citizens and corporate organisations abide by this ruling,” it stated.
