The Appellant testified at the trial that he had been a customer of the Respond-ents since 1965 and had been operating a current account which he maintained with the Respondents at their Benin City Branch. He also operated the account for negotiating and discounting his bills of lading and other shipping documents which were drawn on 'reasonable' letters of credit opened in his favour by his overseas customers to whom he exported rubber. He stated that whenever the Respondents discounted his bills, which was at less one per cent of the value of the goods shipped, they would credit his account with the discounted values of the bills in Nigerian currency. However, payments to the Respondents by his customers for goods shipped were made in the United States Dollars.

The appellant further testified that because of the paucity of staff brought about by the Nigerian civil war, the Respondents did not send to him any statement of account from 1968 until August 1971 when as the result of his insistent requests, he received the comprehensive statement of account covering the period 20th Au¬gust 1966 to 30th July 1971, admitted in evidence as Exhibit 3. To his amazement, he discovered that some bills of lading which had been discounted and had been credited to the account since between 1967 and 1969 were in 1971 reversed and debited to the account He also saw the account was debited with several sums against entries described as "differentials" in respect of some bills of lading he had discounted between 1967 and 1969. He showed severally to the trial court all the entries in Exhibit 3 in respect of the bills complained of. He identified each entry by the number of the bill, its value and the date it was credited, debited or reversed as the case may be. He said the Respondents did not inform him if any of the bills had been short paid or had been dishonoured by non-payment by his overseas customers. The Respondents did not return to him any of the bills reversed in Ex¬hibit 3.

The Appellant produced counterfoils of bills of lading and shipping documents to the value of £130,907.13s.0d. (N261,815.30) admitted in evidence as Exhibit 7-27A, the originals of which he said he had delivered to the Respondents for discounting in 1968 and 1969. An employee of the Respondents, whose duty was to receive all documents despatched to the branch bank and who gave evidence for the Appellant, confirmed having received all the bills in question and said that he handed the same to E. R. Oritseje, the then manager of the Respondents' branch where the account of the Appellant was maintained. The Appellant said, since then the Respondents have not accounted for any of the bills to him and have not returned any to him either.

Finally, the Appellant showed to the trial court the debit entry in Exhibit 3 made on 9/8/69 for £10,099.4s.0d purporting to be devaluation of sterling. He said there was no devaluation of Naira or Dollar, which were the currency of their transac-tions at the material time.

The learned trial Judge entered judgment for the appellant.

Respondent appealed to the Court of Appeal, who set aside the award made by the trial Judge.

The Appellant appealed to the Supreme Court.