Ibrahima Hamidou Dème, a resident of Thiès and represented by lawyer Idrissa Cissé, filed an application for interim relief with the Supreme Court requesting that the court order Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko and Minister of Finance and Budget Cheikh Diba to disclose the exact amount of special funds, commonly referred to as “political funds”, allocated in the state budget to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister for the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years.
To support his claim, Dème relied on several national and international legal texts. He argued that the right to information is a fundamental right, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption, and the Ecowas Protocol on Combating Corruption.
At the national level, he cited Law No 2025-15 of 4th September, 2025, concerning Access to Information, Article 13 of which grants every citizen or natural person legally residing in Senegal the right to access information generated or held by those subject to it. Article 8 of the same law specifies that all public officials, including any person holding a legislative, executive, administrative, or judicial office, are subject to this obligation to provide information.
The applicant indicated that he had sent correspondence to this effect on 6th January, 2026, to the president, the prime minister, and Minister Diba. Having received no response within the 15 day legal deadline stipulated by Article 19 of the Law on Access to Information, he filed an application with the judge of summary proceedings, arguing that this silence constituted a serious violation of a fundamental right.
After examining the application and hearing the submissions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office seeking its dismissal, the judge of summary proceedings reiterated the conditions for interim measures, based on Article 86 of Organic Law No 2017-09 of January 17, 2017, on the Supreme Court. This remedy requires the fulfilment of three cumulative conditions: urgency, the usefulness of the measure, and the absence of any obstacle to the execution of an administrative decision. On the merits, the court held that the applicant had not demonstrated the existence of proprietary rights whose protection would necessitate the disclosure of the requested information, especially since this information was included in the initial Finance Law, published in the Official Journal. It also noted that the applicant had not established that the requested measure was necessary to end a prejudicial situation, nor that the absence of the requested documents prevented an effective remedy to defend his rights.
For these reasons, the President of the Second Administrative Chamber, Oumar Gaye, declared inadmissible the application of Dème.
