By Rachael Najjuma
27th July 2021
The Inventor of COVID-19 supplementary drug Covidex, Prof. Patrick Ogwang has asked High Court to dismiss the case filed by Lawyer George William Alenyo seeking orders that he is not the lawful proprietor of the drug and therefore should remit money collected from the sales to the consolidated fund.
Prof. Ogwang together with his company Jena Herbals Uganda Limited which produces Covidex through their lawyers of Omongole and Company Advocates argue in their written response filed before Kampala High Court that the case against them is incompetent, political, abuse of court process, and has no legal basis and therefore, it should be dismissed with costs.
Early this month, Alenyo together with the Christian Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture, Industry, Trade and Tourism sued Ogwang together with his company and 12 others for alleged failure to perform their statutory duties.
Alenyo faulted the respondents for failure to do due diligence to establish the true ownership of Covidex drug, failure to collect taxes and remit it to government coffers, failure to obtain environmental impact assessment of the impact of the ongoing extraction or exploitation of millions of the tree species expected to be used to make millions of veils of Covidex among others.
However, Prof Ogwang says the Covidex drug was developed in 2020 at Jena Herbals Limited which is outside MUST using private funds and the government only disbursed funds to the university in April 2021 for evaluation purposes of the already available product.
The Covidex drug was approved by the National Drug Authority as a supportive treatment in the management of viral infections.
The other 12 respondents are yet to file their defense to the case which is allocated to Civil Division Judge Musa Ssekaana.
There is also another related case against Prof Ogwang filed by Advocates for People-AFP which is owned by the former Lubaga North MP Moses Kasibante and Elvis Kintu Nsonyi.
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