Admin l Tuesday, August 01, 2017
IKEJA, Lagos, Nigeria – A commercial bank and a Lagos church have been dragged before a Lagos State High Court, Ikeja over alleged illegal and forceful takeover of a property at Oba Akran Avenue, Ikeja.
This is contained in a $14.6 million suit filed by DN Tyre and Rubber Plc (formerly Dunlop Nigeria Plc), in which the Claimant among other reliefs is praying the court to compel the Defendants to pay to it the sum of $14.6million as damages and to restrain them from further entering, encroaching on or further building or develop the land.
According to the suit, the Registered Trustee of the Word of Power Global Ministries International (the Triumphant Christian Centre) Olubiyo pastors Harriet Olubiyo, Akin Ayanwale, Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice and Lagos Land Use and Allocation Committee were therein joined as Defendants in the alleged illegal acquisition of 12,500 Square metres from the Claimant’s 20.22 acres at plot 23 Oba Akran Avenue.
In the Claimant’s claim, the bank allegedly set the machinery in motion for the alleged forceful acquisition of its property by prematurely call up a loan facility and subsequently sold the land to the church.
However, the bank in its response absolved itself of any wrongdoing in the matter. In its consequential statement of defence, the bank stated that the Claimant voluntarily offered the land to it, to liquidate its indebtedness.
Similarly, the church contended that as at the time it took possession of the property, the Claimant had neither legal or equitable interest to protect any longer in the property as it had voluntarily transferred it to the bank.
But the Claimant in its amended statement of claim accused the bank inducing it into the contract in which the purported transferred of the property was affected on an “unsubstantiated excuse that it was a directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria, DN Tyre contended that “by a Deed dated December 18, 2009, the Claimant purported to assign to the 1st Defendant (bank) an unidentified (unspecified) portion of the Claimant land for the total sum of N625million.
