A Federal High Court in Lagos has ordered the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to pay a fine of 500 million Naira as damages to the All Progressives Congress (APC) for illegally outlawing the party’s presidential campaign fund-raising platform.

The presiding judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Ibrahim Buba, gave the order in his ruling on Tuesday, subsequent to a suit filed by the APC against the NCC as well as Etisalat, MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel Nigeria and Visafone Communications.

Justice Ibrahim, who ruled that the APC was protected by the constitution to pursue the enforcement of its fundamental rights once they were violated, dismissed the counter affidavit by the NCC and subsequently ruled that the actions of the respondents were illegal and unconstitutional.

He further ruled that the damages were to be jointly and severally paid by all the respondents.

The APC had previously sued the NCC demanding a damage fee of 25 billion Naira for allegedly banning its presidential campaign fund-raising platform.

The party had accused the commission of instructing the 2nd to 6th respondents to stop an SMS platform it created for the purpose of getting contributions from eager members of the public for its presidential campaign.

The party claimed to have initiated the participatory fund-raising platform as a way of getting every member of the general public to contribute N100 to its presidential campaign fund each time they send APC as an SMS to the short code “35350″.