The Court of Appeal in Lagos has nullified the 2014 judgment of a Federal High Court that allowed Guaranty Trust Bank Plc (GTBank) to take possession of a sprawling N30 billion, 44-room mansion in Ikoyi, Lagos, belonging to Alhaji Agboola Abiola, son of the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola.
In a unanimous decision, Justices Paul Bassi, Polycarp Kwahar, and Abdulaziz Anka declared the foreclosure invalid, citing serious irregularities in the legal mortgage upon which GTBank had based its claim to the property.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Bassi ruled that the Federal High Court erred by failing to address credible allegations of forgery and document manipulation raised by the appellants.
He stated that the bank’s mortgage documents were riddled with discrepancies that undermined their validity.
The appeal, marked CA/L/888/2014, challenged the June 20, 2014 judgment of the lower court which had granted GTBank the right to enforce the foreclosure.
The appeal was filed by the appellants, RCN Networks Ltd and Alhaji Agboola Abiola, through their counsel, Dr Charles Adeogun-Phillips, SAN.
Central to the appeal was the authenticity of the tripartite legal mortgage presented by GTBank.
While RCN Networks admitted signing the deed, Abiola vehemently denied doing so.
He alleged that the execution page, which appeared to bear his signature, was lifted from an entirely different document and fraudulently attached to the mortgage deed.
The appellate court found this claim plausible, pointing out that the document’s pagination did not add up.
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According to the court, the pages of the mortgage deed were numbered “2 of 9” through “9 of 9,” yet the execution page was marked “11 of 17,” indicating it likely came from another set of documents.
“This inconsistency in pagination alone casts a serious cloud over the authenticity of the mortgage deed,” Justice Bassi held.
Further complicating the case, the appellants accused GTBank of unilaterally consolidating two separate loan agreements without their knowledge.
They alleged that the bank had attempted to use a document relating to a N508 million loan to recover a separate N1 billion facility, even after liquidating shares pledged as security.
Although police investigations into the forgery allegations produced contradictory findings—one calling for arbitration and another dismissing the claims—the Court of Appeal ruled that these reports were insufficient to dismiss the glaring red flags surrounding the document’s authenticity.
“The lower court failed in its duty by ignoring these material discrepancies and focusing solely on interpreting Clause 6 of a suspect document.A court cannot base its judgment on a document whose integrity is in serious doubt,” the court held.
The court concluded that GTBank had no legal grounds to appoint a receiver or enforce foreclosure on the Ikoyi property, as the mortgage itself was deemed fundamentally flawed.
Consequently, the appellate court set aside the judgment of the Federal High Court and declared the foreclosure invalid. Both parties were ordered to bear their respective legal costs.
-Vanguard News
