Billionaire business man and concession mogul, Wale Babalakin is not getting respite from the courts in his legal battle against the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON.
Earlier today, the federal High Court sitting in Lagos has dismissed a NGN300 billion suit filed by Wale Babalakin, and his five companies, against the AMCON for freezing his bank accounts.
The suit was dismissed for lack of merit, with the punitive cost of NGN10,000 awarded against him and his companies.
Babalakin’s companies joined as claimants/applicants in the suit are Bi-Courtney Limited, Chartered Investment Limited, Resort International Limited and Roygate Properties Limited.
The suit (No. FHC/L/CS/1361/2014) was instituted against AMCON, following an ex-parte order of 22 September, 2014 by Justice Okon Abang, which stopped him from withdrawing money from all his bank accounts in the country.
As a rationale for his judgement, Justice Idris “It takes me to a very important issue I wish to address arising from the proceedings that led to this judgment. The issue has to do with the duty of a counsel to properly and fully represent his client. Once a counsel accepts a brief from his client, he is under a solemn professional duty to properly and fully represent the client.
As a repository of knowledge of the law, counsel must work hard on each individual case he is handling in terms of researching afresh and always keeping in touch with the facts of the case, especially at the trial stage. This is because he is duty bound by any strategy or procedure he adopts and he cannot recline from it together with the consequences flowing from that place.
Although, the court may intervene in the face of an obvious incompetence, it can only do so if the intervention will not occasion a miscarriage of justice to the other-another side.”
Babalakin is the owner of Bi-Courtney Limited, Chartered Investment Limited, Resort International Limited and Roygate Properties Limited. Bi-Courtney is the concessionaire to the Murtala Mohammed Airport Terminal 2, MMA2 in Lagos.
