By Innocent Anaba

LAGOS-A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, has  restrained  the National Agency for Poverty Alleviation, NAPEP,  from going ahead with its plan to award contract for the fourth phase of the motorised three wheelers (tricycles) popularly known as Keke NAPEP.

Trial judge in the matter, Justice James Tsoho, granted the order, following the suit against NAPEP by a Lagos-based company, Autobahn Techniques Limited, the concept owner, initiator and till recently,  supplier of the Keke NAPEP tricycles to the Federal Government.

The claimants had asked the court to declare that they  are entitled to the protection of their intellectual property, proprietary concept and trade mark in the Keke NAPEP programme.

They had also prayed the court to declare that the ports congestion in Nigeria in 2008 was an event over which the claimants had no control and an incidence of force majeure and absolves the claimants of any liability for breach of contract in those circumstances.

The court, meanwhile, restrained NAPEP,  its agents or servants from publishing tenders and awarding the KEKE NAPEP contract to any person other than the claimant,  pending the hearing of the motion on notice for  order of interlocutory injunction against the defendant. Further hearing in the matter,  was adjourned till May 24, 2011.

NAPEP had twice last year,  published in some national dailies, public tenders for the fourth phase of the keke NAPEP project. The Senate Committee on Poverty Alleviation stopped the initial invitation for tender for reasons of the non-conclusion of the third order. Autobahn Techniques subsequently petitioned the Office of the National Coordinator of NAPEP protesting the commercialization, violation and infringement of the original concept of the “KEKE NAPEP” programme and calling attention to the surreptitious attempts to “bastardise and appropriate” the project.