TheCable

A federal high court sitting in Lagos on Wednesday struck out a suit filed by the federal government against seven commercial banks.

According to Channels TV, Chuka Obiozor, the presiding judge, struck out the suit and awarded a cost of N200,000 against the federal government and in favour of all the affected banks except Skye Bank which was not represented in court.

The suit sought the remittance of the sum of $793,200,000 allegedly hidden with them in contravention of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy.

The banks are Skye Bank Plc, First Bank Plc, Keystone Bank Plc, Diamond Bank Plc, Sterling Bank Plc and Fidelity Bank Plc.

Yemi Akinseye-George, counsel to the federal government, on Tuesday filed a notice of discontinuance of the suit, based on public interest as it decided to explore an ‘out of court settlement’ with the banks.

Lawyers to the banks had no objections to the notice of discontinuance but they insisted that the proper application is for the court to dismiss the suit and award cost against the federal government.

In his ruling today, Obiazor held that the dismissal of an action is one of the gravest actions a plaintiff can face and so the court must be slow to take this option and only exercise such a discretion judiciously.

After considering the reasons for the withdrawal of the suit, the court held that since the case had yet to proceed to trial, the proper order to make was to strike out the suit.

In awarding cost, Obiazor held that the banks had placed no evidence before him to support the damage to their reputation as a result of the actions of the federal government.

He, therefore, used his discretion to award a cost of N200,000 each.