Fourteen years after its liquidation on January 16, 2006, Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos, has ordered Jolimair Nigeria Limited and three other debtors to pay N1,494,987,317.44 owed the defunct Gulf Bank Plc to the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC).
The corporation, as the official liquidator secured judgment in the debt recovery suit Number: FHC/L/CS/1328/17 – NDIC (Gulf Bank) vs. Jolimair Nigeria Limited & 3 Others, prayed the court for the recovery jointly and severally from the respondents of the total debt sum of
Justice Buba concurred with the NDIC that the respondents also owed interest on the total debt sum calculated from the 16th January 2006 at the rate of 21% per annum until the whole debt was fully liquidated, in addition to a cost of N500,000.00 awarded against the Respondents.
A statement by Dr. Sunday Oluyemi, spokesman of the NDIC on Thursday recalled that “the amount was due and payable by Jolimair Nigeria Limited to the Gulf Bank (in-liquidation) as at 16th January 2006 when the defunct bank’s operating licence was revoked by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).”
The amount, he explained further, “was in respect of banking facilities granted by the bank in-liquidation and guaranteed by three other respondents in the suit: Joseph Samir Karkar, Abbas Shour and Patrick Sule Uduka.”
When the matter came up for judgment on January 31, 2020, the Judge, while granting the reliefs sought by the NDIC said the respondents failed to tender any documents to proof that they had since settled their indebtedness to the bank in liquidation.
People like them, he lamented, were responsible for the failure of the bank.
It would be recalled that the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation, in the exercise of its power as the liquidator of Gulf Bank (in-liquidation) instituted the debt recovery case against Jolimair Nigeria Limited in 2017, under the Failed Banks Act to recover the outstanding sum of N1.494bn owed to the closed bank by the Respondents.