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| Chief Great Ogboru |
Justice Okon Abang in a judgment on Friday rejected pleas to reverse the order.
Abang said the order could not be discharged based on the agreement between the parties to settle the dispute between them. Abang had on June 24, 2013 adjudged Ogboru and his company, Fiogret Ltd., as contemnors for violating the order obtained by the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria.
AMCON was, by the order, empowered to take possession of certain property belonging to Ogboru and his firm, given their failure to repay a N200m loan granted them by Ecobank Plc (now Sterling Bank Plc).
Ogboru and others were accused of violating the order by violently breaking into the properties located at 13A Ijora Causeway and Norman Williams Street Ikoyi, both in Lagos.
Abang had, while adjudging both defendants as contemnors on June 24, said he could not order their arrest because AMCON failed to comply with the rules of initiating contempt proceedings.
But both AMCON and the defendants had filed terms of settlement, which the court adopted as its judgment on Friday.
While he adopted the agreement for settlement of the debt dispute between the parties, Abang held that he lacked jurisdiction to “vacate a final order” of the court.
Therefore, before adopting it as its judgment, the court struck out paragraph 11 of the agreement, which asked the court to reverse the order adjudging the defendants as contemnors.
Abang said, as a person, he would have loved to set aside the order, but “sitting as a court, my hands are tied.”
According to him, the court had become “functus officio” and thus could no longer discharge the order.
He said the only option available to Ogboru and the company was for them to pursue their appeal at the Court of Appeal.
Ogboru’s counsel, Chief Nelson Imoh, and AMCON’s lawyer, Mr. Kunle Ogunba (SAN), had while addressing the court on Friday, urged the judge to set aside the order “in the overall spirit of the parties to reconcile.”
Source: Punch
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