Stop Intercontinental, Access banks’ merger, Akingbola urges Appeal Court

By Innocent Anaba
LAGOS—Dr. Erastus Akingbola, former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank Plc, has asked the Court of Appeal, Lagos, to stop the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and its Governor, Lamido Sanusi from liquidating or revoking the bank’s licence.

He also asked the appellate court to set aside the earlier ruling of a Federal High Court, Lagos, which dismissed his suit, challenging the planned sale of Intercontinental Bank to Access Bank.

Akingbola wants the appellate court to restrain CBN from withdrawing Intercontinental’s inter-bank guaranty, pending the determination of the appeal.

Justice Okechuwku Okeke of the Federal High Court, Lagos, had dismissed a suit by Akingbola and a former executive director of Intercontinental Bank, Mr. Bayo Dada, challenging a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, for business combination, recently signed by their former bank and Access Bank.

Akingbola and Dada had insisted in the suit by their counsel, Onyebuchi Aniakor, that CBN was wrong to have masterminded the signing of the said MoU without recourse to them as shareholders and former directors of Intercontinental Bank.

Dada had urged the lower court to set aside a letter issued by CBN removing him from the board of Intercontinental Bank.
Justice Okeke had held  that the suit was an abuse of court process, as there was a similar suit by other interested parties on the same subject matter.

The lower court also held that the suit was status barred, as the suit was challenging an action carried out as far back as August 14, 2009, when Sanusi removed some bank chiefs.

Akingbola and Dada, dissatisfied with the lower court ruling, appealed against same, contending in the appeal, that Justice Okeke made fundamental errors in his judgment by going into issues which were not before him.

They are contending in the appeal, that the lower court erred in law when it adjudged the suit as an abuse of court process, merely on an assertion contained in the preliminary objections of the defendants, rather than the verified averments in the petition.

The appellants insisted that Justice Okeke made fundamental error in concluding that the letter in which Dada was removed was not tendered, adding that the action occasioned substantial prejudice to them.