TENS of protesters demanding ‘justice for lottery operators’ on Monday besieged the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos.

The protest was in connection with a lottery operations case between Western Lotto Ltd and National Lottery Regulatory Commission, Registrar of Trademarks, Premier Lotto Ltd & 22 others, before Justice C.J. Aneke.

Western Lotto Ltd is owned by a former Ogun State Senator Chief Buruji Kashamu while Premier Lotto popularly known as Baba Ijebu, is owned by Chief Adebutu Kensington.

In the suit marked FHC/L/CS/2321/19, Western Lotto Ltd claimed that the rival lottery firms infringed its licence on “Ghana games”, a popular lotto product.

But the protesters bearing placards with inscriptions such as ‘Justice is not for sale’, ‘Shine your eyes’, ‘Stop abusing judicial process,” claimed that there was ‘judicial bias’ in the handling of the suit.

The case, which was to hold on Monday morning, was adjourned till today.

In its Motion on Notice brought pursuant to Section 6(6) of the 1999 Constitution, the third defendant, Premier Lotto Ltd, is seeking three reliefs, including “An order declining jurisdiction to entertain, adopt or otherwise give effect to the Terms of Settlement dated 10.07.20 executed between the Plaintiff and the 1st Defendant” and “An order striking out the Terms of Settlement”.

But responding to the protest, Western Lotto’s Managing Director Dr. Olumide Adedeji said the protesters were sponsored by defendants in the suit who had “lost faith in the capacity of their legal teams to save them; hence the resort to extra-judicial tactics.”