opportunities available to all Community citizens. 21. He requests the Court to declare that this Regulation is illegal; to make an order restraining the ECOWAS Parliament from proceeding to recruit a Secretary General, pending the determination of the proceedings brought before the Court; to order that the appointment to the office of Secretary General of ECOWAS Parliament be done in accordance with the provisions of the ECOWAS Staff Regulations; and finally, to order the Defendants to pay the sum of N20,000,000 (Twenty Million Naira) in damages. 22. From the foregoing, particularly as regards the facts and pleas-in-law invoked by the Applicant, the Court has to provide an answer to the principal question of whether the Applicant has any interest at stake. The Court's Analysis of Interest at Stake 23. It can be deduced from the facts of the case and the pleas-in-law invoked that the instant case deals with appreciation of the legality of the Regulation complained of. In challenging the said Regulation, the Applicant relies on the provisions of Article 10(c) [sic] of the 19 January 2005 Supplementary Protocol on the Court, which provides: "... individuals and corporate bodies in proceedings for the determination of an act or inaction of a Community official which violates the rights of the individuals or corporate bodies..." 24. The Applicant relies on this Article to affirm that he has an interest at stake. He declares that his interest is derived from the fact that he is a Community citizen; that he is the promoter of a regional development project, through Asher's Initiatives LTD/GTE. He asserts that he had requested the participation of all the Member States of the Community in his company, which could have had a sure impact on the economic and industrial development of the sub-region, but then the allocation of the post of Secretary General to Guinea constituted a hindrance to the regional development perspective of his company, and that if he had been allowed to apply for the post, he would have secured that office and would have been capable of implementing the Asher's Initiative LTD/GTE Project, which, he claims, is a force to reckon with in the overall economic and energy development of the sub-region. 25. He concludes that an interest clearly exists for him and his company to seek the annulment of the Regulation in contention. He indicates that his interest in the instant case resides in the fact that he is the promoter of a regional development body, and that he had been deprived of the opportunity of seeing this regional body participate in Community development, as a result of the restriction of candidates to Guinean citizens only. 26. The question which arises is whether Regulation C/REG.5/06/06 harms the Applicant; if it does, then he would have an interest at stake. 27. Generally, and from a legal standpoint, the necessity for an applicant to provide justification of interest in a case is attested to by the adage that "Where there is no interest, there is no action", and also "An interest is the measuring rod for an action". In other words, an application is admissible only when the applicant justifies that he brings a case before a judge for the purposes of protecting an interest or defending an infringement of such. Such an interest must be direct, personal and certain. 28. Also, before examining the direct relationship between the contested Regulation and the situation of the Applicant, one needs to know, first of all, whether the said Regulation really affected him. 29. Indeed, the provision made under Article 10(c) of the 2005 Supplementary Protocol on the Court, in respect of bringing cases before the Court to contest the legality of an act of the Community, does concern the existence of an act or inaction of a Community official which violates the rights of the person requesting the annulment of such act. The complaint brought forward in the instant case, by the Applicant, boils down to stating that his company has been deprived of the opportunity of competing for a professional position which does not constitute in any way whatsoever a direct harm done against him. Now, if there is any injury caused in not allowing his company to compete for the post, such injury can only be detrimental to the Community and not to the Applicant. 30. It is the accepted truth that allocating the post of Secretary General of ECOWAS Parliament to Guinea neither affected him in his legal status nor in his constituency. The alleged grievance is only hypothetical, no more no less, in the sense that the Applicant does not demonstrate the personal and direct benefit he would have derived from it. In other words, the Applicant does not demonstrate the existence of an injury he may have suffered, which could have arisen from the Regulation complained of; the mere fact of being the promoter of a regional project cannot on its own amount to the existence of an interest at stake in the instant case. Indeed, here, the interest at stake is to be derived from the professional qualification of the Applicant and from the link between such qualification and the post that the Applicant considers to have been deprived of competing for. Even then, the Applicant has not demonstrated any direct link between his 4