N122b Debt: Court Convicts First Bank Chairman, CEO of Contempt

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

First Bank of Nigeria Limited; its Chairman, Mrs Ibukun Awosika; and the Managing Director, Mr Adesola Adeduntan, have been convicted of contempt of court by a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos.

The court on Wednesday found the trio guilty of refusing to release the N122 billion bond the bank allegedly guaranteed to pay the Ejama-Ebubu community in Eleme Local Government Area of Rivers State on behalf of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited.

Recall that 10 indigenes of Ejama community, in the substantive suit had sued Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Netherlands, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, United Kingdom, and SPDC, over alleged oil spills that occurred when Shell operated in the community at the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt.

Justice Ibrahim Buba had in his judgment in 2010, awarded N17 billion to the representatives of the Ogoni people.

The court equally granted the Ejama Chiefs 25 percent interest charge on the principal sum of about N17 billion.

SPDC had then appealed against the judgment and applied for a stay of execution of the judgment pending the appeal.

As a condition for granting the stay of execution, the court required Shell’s bankers, First Bank Plc, to provide a guarantee of the judgment sum.

This condition was complied with. But Shell’s appeal failed at the Court of Appeal on technical grounds, ostensibly because it filed its processes out of time and without regularising them.

Consequent upon the failure of the appeal of SPDC at Appeal Court, and the refusal of First Bank Plc, to honour the payment of judgment debt which the bank had early guarantee through a bond, the applicants, through their lawyers, Chief Lucius Nwosu (SAN), A.A. Salawu-Rabana (SAN) and Ken C. Njemanze (SAN) filed Form 48 and Form 49 (committal to prison) against the bank, its chairman and managing director.

However, ruling could not be delivered in the contempt proceedings until yesterday, due to several applications that were filed by the contemnors, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which sought to join as party in the suit, and SPDC.

At the court yesterday, Justice Buba convicted the trio of contempt, but suspended the sentencing for three months to enable the bank and its officials to purge themselves of the contempt, warning that if the convicts fail to purge themselves of the contempt by September 6, they would be sent to prison.