The Defendant is a commercial bank. It has branches in Lagos at Broad Street; in Uyo at Oron Road; and in Calabar at Calabar Road. The 1st to 4th Plaintiffs are companies incorporated in Nigeria of which the 6th Plaintiff is the Chairman/Chief Executive. The 1st Plaintiff maintained current accounts with the Defendant bank at the Calabar, the Broad Street Lagos and the Oron Road Uyo branches. The 2nd Plaintiff maintained a current account at the Defendant's Broad Street, Lagos branch, the 3rd Plaintiff at the Idumota Street Lagos branch and the 4th Plaintiff also at the Idumota Street Lagos branch. The 5th Plaintiff is the wife of the 6th Plaintiff although she appears to bear her maiden name in this case. She is a director in the 1st and 2nd Plaintiff companies. At all times material to this case, the 6th Plaintiff was a Director in the Defendant bank and a shareholder of the bank having 4,468,318 shares. His wife is or was a shareholder of the bank having 3,489,743 shares. The 6th Plaintiff, apart from being a director in the Defendant bank, was the Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Board of Directors of the Defendant bank.

In the statement of defence, the responsibilities of the Committee were stated as:-

In the reply to the statement of defence, the Plaintiffs admitted (a) and (b) above. There was a further averment in the statement of defence (para.5) that "this Committee is the most important and powerful in the bank." This was not specifically denied but no reference was made to the paragraph in the reply. It is by the rules of pleadings taken to have been admitted. See Olale v. Ekwelendu (1989) 4 NWLR (Pt.115) 326; Adeleke v. Aserifa (1990) 3 NWLR (Pt.136) 94.

It was in these circumstances the 1st to 4th Plaintiffs became indebted to the tune of N64,043,389.88 as at 31 December, 1995 arising from (a) the overdrawn cheques at the Calabar branch; (b) the value of foreign exchange bids by the Plaintiffs and their associated companies in Lagos branches totalling N41,457,176.21 which was utilised by the Plaintiffs without matching funds in their accounts- the allegation being that the 6th Plaintiff facilitated this by manoeuvring the movement of the Defendant bank's funds to cover his companies' fundlessness and the resulting indebtedness; (e) other miscellaneous loans which the 1st Plaintiff enjoyed by mortgage security up to a limit of N5,000,000.00.

It was part of the aspect of the movement of the Defendant's funds, as alleged by the Defendant, that the total sum of N127,623,809.69 was systematically credited and correspondingly debited into the 1st Plaintiff's account at the Broad Street Lagos branch as follows:

As will be seen, each credit was eliminated by each debit. But there is some implication which was that as for the 1st Plaintiff, each of those amounts was a loan which was paid off soon after. That would under normal banking practice attract interest. This is reflected in the averments in paras 6 and 7 of the statement of claim. The Plaintiffs claim that the amounts were 'falsely and fraudulently" debited to the 1st Plaintiff's account and that they were amounts which "consisted of monies paid into account No.10044-001 of the 1st Plaintiff on various dates."

The Defendant filed a defence and a counter-claim to the Plaintiffs' action. At the conclusion of evidence the Learned trial Judge found for the Plaintiffs and the counter-claim of the Defendant was dismissed.

Dissatisfied, Defendant appealed to the Court of Appeal which allowed the appeal of the Defendant in part. The order dismissing the Defendant's counter-claim was set aside and in its place the counter-¬claim was allowed to the tune of N12,155,179.00k

Plaintiffs dissatisfied appealed to the Supreme Court.