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The long-awaited judgment in the locus classicus matter against Africel and Orange is due today at the High Court before Justice Adrian Fisher who had taken over one and a half years without judgment after closing the file for judgment but became long overdue despite several calls for ruling in the case.
The matter has taken half a decade in court changing the number of Judges in the case until it finally landed before Justice Fisher. Fisher was very fast with the case but everything became snails paced after hearing from all the witnesses in the matter.
However, Native Consortium and Research Centre (NCRC) had threatened to hold a protest several times because the court was, according to the Consortium, slow with the case involving 299 Sierra Leone subscribers.
Executive Director, NCRC, Edmund Abu Jr called on his countrymen to were blue and white today and asked the media, national and international to witness the sitting today at the Siaka Steven Street Courthouse where the ruling of the Judge will be delivered.
He said the Consortium has spent well over one hundred thousand Dollars on the case for the past five years, noting that he believes the subscribers will get the justice they have been waiting for over the years.
“By estimation, every subscriber will have five million old Leones if the case is won by the Consortium, but if we lose the case, it means, I am going to jail”, Abu maintained, adding that he believes that the fines that will be levied on the companies are mere chicken change considering the millions of Dollars these companies are making yearly operating in Sierra Leone.
It could be recalled that the Parliament of Sierra Leone in 2011, fined Africell and Orange one million Dollars which went straight to NATCOM. In 2017, NATCOM levied a whopping seven hundred and fifty thousand Dollars on Orange, Africell fined four hundred and fifty thousand and Sierratel fined two hundred thousand Dollars.
