Controversy has continued to trail the decision of the Supreme Court over the contractual crisis between one of Nigeria’s leading banks in the country, GTBank and a wholly indigenous auto-assembly plant Innoson Motors.
While Innoson, owned by Dr. Innocent Chukwuma claimed that the court has asked GT Bank to pay a sum of N14billion into its account, the bank claimed that the decision of the court was far from this.
The company Secretary of GTBank, Erhi Obeneduo, said, “The attention of Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (“the Bank”) has been drawn to false, mischievous and malicious statements circulating in the news and social media in respect of a purported directive by the Supreme Court of Nigeria to the Bank to make payments to one of its debtor Customers.
The Bank’s Customers and the General Public are hereby kindly urged to disregard these false statements as nothing could be further from the truth. There was no directive or Order issued by the Supreme Court of Nigeria to the Bank to make any payment to any of its debtor Customers.
The Bank as a highly responsible corporate citizen will in accordance with its culture and tradition refrain from making comments about on-going litigation matters and will continue to focus on using legal means to recover its bad debts. It must be emphasised that the Bank remains undeterred in its recovery drive against recalcitrant debtors.
We again reiterate that there is no iota of truth in the falsehood being peddled by desperate and mischievous elements and the General Public should disregard same in its entirety.
A claim by an agent of the bank, stated, “In fact, the Supreme Court simply directed GTB and Innoson to return to the Court of Appeal for a hearing of the Bank’s substantive appeal on the matter. It is actually in the tradition of the apex court to issue definitive rulings only on Fridays, and what it delivered today was more or less a directive. However, court feelers say this is actually a win for GTB as it grants what the Bank has always wanted—and what Innoson has consistently stalled, which is for the Court of Appeal in Enugu to hear the Bank’s appeal.
“The Bank’s appeal of a 2013 High Court judgment gotten by Innoson had stalled at the Court of Appeal for the past two years due to the pending motions filed by both parties at the Supreme Court. On Thursday, 7th of June, 2018 the Apex Court finally sat on the matter and asked both parties to withdraw their motions and return to the Court of Appeal, because GTB’s appeal at the lower court had not been heard.
“The implication [of the Supreme Court Directive] is that both parties are going back to the court of appeal for the Bank’s substantive appeal to be heard,” a source in one of the legal teams of the parties said. “The court said it won’t hear any applications and asked all parties to withdraw their applications.” One of the applications that was withdrawn and struck out by the Supreme Court is the plea filed by Innoson on 27th of February, 2015 asking for the court to order GTB to issue a money guarantee to the court. This is interesting because it means that, rather than rule for the Bank to pay Innoson 14bn as the latter had claimed, the apex court struck out that particular request.”
The directive of the bank that the matter returns to the Appeal Court, will be effected on June 14 when the matter is expected to resume again at the lower court.