Officials of FAAN had stormed the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and forcefully evicted Maevis workers. Maevis then filed a suit against SITA and FAAN.
The court said such a contract with SITA was invalid and must be cancelled with immediate effect. It ordered SITA to pay Maevis N5 billion as general damages and relief.
Justice Ibrahim Buba, in delivering the judgment yesterday said SITA was aware of a court order preventing FAAN from awarding the contract to another company other than Maevis but still went ahead with the job. The judge said FAAN cannot award the contract to any other company than Maevis.
The plaintiff (Maevis) had urged the court to declare that the Defendants (FAAN) are liable to the Plaintiff for willfully and intentionally procuring and/or inducing the Federal Airports Authority (FAAN) to breach its subsisting agreement with the plaintiff by engaging in inconsistent and prejudicial transactions with FAAN to the detriment of the plaintiff.
It sought a declaration that the defendants’ actions in willfully and intentionally procuring and/or inducing FAAN to breach its subsisting agreement with the plaintiff is impacting on the plaintiff’s ability to collect revenue due to the Federal Government, pursuant to the facilities provided by the plaintiff under the agreement.
On October 1, 2007, the Federal Government, through FAAN, entered into a concession agreement with Maevis.
Under the 10-year pact, Maevis was to improve the system for managing passenger and aircraft handling. It invested N7 billion, sourced from Nigerian banks, in acquiring and operating an Integrated Airport Operation Management System (AOMS), Common User Self-Service System (CUSS), Flight Information Display System (FIDS), and Airport Pricing and Billing System from international IT vendors such as Cisco and Dell.
When FAAN allegedly failed in its obligations to provide the uninterrupted power required to operate the sophisticated data relay system, Maevis was compelled to invest in a clean power centre and extensive cable laying to operate its data room, the boarding gates, and 62 check-in desks in the airport.
Thus, it had been possible to process passengers and transfer their data to airports all over the world even when the MMA generators failed. The airport was thus certified to be in compliance with AITA Simplifying the Business (StB) classification.
A key outcome of the investment in automation is that loopholes for corruption were being blocked.
But on March 24, 2012, officials of FAAN forcefully and physically took over the part of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport occupied by Maevis and violently ejected its workers from the premises. FAAN proceeded to take over Maevis equipment and transferred operations of some or all of the facilities and services provided by Maevis to SITA.
The authority had been at loggerheads with Maevis almost from the inception of the concession. It frequently stopped the concessionaire from required construction and deployment of new automation equipment that would further take away capturing data and invoicing for services such as aircraft landing and parking from human control.
FAAN, on its part – similar to virtually all the concession agreements between it and private sector companies under President Olusegun Obasanjo administration – claims that the contracts were skewed in favour of Maevis.
TheGuardain
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