The plaintiff/respondent, as customer of the defendant/appellant bank, paid the sum of N30, 489.75 to the said bank's branch at Aba to be remitted to a company in England known as Servisol Limited. This was in or about July, 1981. It was meant to cover the cost of a consignment of 18,000 units of a fire extinguisher known as Rapid fire Extinguisher Assembly 640 GMS to be shipped to the respondent in Nigeria.

In pursuance of this import transaction, the respondent submitted to the appellant four documents, namely, (1) exchange control copy bill of entry No. CO 28757/200534 of 6/7/81, (2) tax clearance certificate for 1981, (3) original and Photostat Form 'M' CBN No. 148020, and (4) insurance certificate. It is pleaded in para. 5 of the amended statement of claim that these documents were made available to the appellant by the respondent under cover of a letter dated 3 August, 1981 for the purpose of the remittance of the money to the overseas suppliers.

The appellant's Aba branch, as alleged by the appellant, forwarded the documents to its International Division of the Head Office I Lagos on September, 1981 together with the said money. It would appear that between Aba and Lagos, there was some inability to explain the whereabouts of the documents in question. On more than one occasion the respondent was requested to forward one of the documents or other so that foreign exchange approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria could be obtained in order to remit the money to England. The particular document which was said to have caused the delay was the current tax clearance certificate.

If the remittance had been done in time, the consignment would have been paid for in what is called, in short, pre-SFEM rate i.e. pre-Second Foreign Exchange Market rate. That rate was considerably lower and more favourable to importers than what later obtained. In April, 1989, it is said that the Central Bank of Nigeria stopped the pre-SFEM rate. The respondent was able to present another tax clearance certificate in November, 1989 by which time it was too late for it to be of any use for the pre-SFEM rate. The respondent claimed that the pre-SFEM conversion rate of N30, 489.75 which it paid to the appellant was £23,810.00.

The respondent therefore took out a writ of summons on 24 April, 1990 claiming a total claim of N1 million (one million naira) representing the following:

The respondent also claimed an interest of 25% on the sum of £23,810.00 or its naira equivalent from 27/7/81 until date of judgment.

At the address stage the counsel for the appellant raised the issue that the respondent's case was statute barred. His argument was that the appellant admitted the loss of the documents since 1981-1983 while the respondent only sued in 1990.

After hearing the matter, the trial High Court found for the respondent and made an award in the following heads: -

The court awarded costs of N1, 000.00 to the respondent also.

Being dissatisfied with the judgment of the High Court, the appellant now appealed to the Court of Appeal.