The Court of Appeal, Lagos Division, has overturned a 2014 judgment by the Federal High Court that allowed Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) Plc to take possession of a 44-room mansion in Ikoyi, Lagos, valued at N30 billion and owned by Alhaji Agboola Abiola, son of the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola.
In a unanimous decision delivered on June 18, 2025, and certified on June 19, the appellate court ruled that the foreclosure was invalid due to “irregularities in the legal mortgage” relied upon by GTBank.
Justice Paul Bassi, who delivered the lead judgment, criticized the lower court’s ruling for failing to consider “credible allegations of forgery and document manipulation” raised by the appellants — RCN Network Limited and Alhaji Si-Nurani Abiola.
The appeal, marked CA/L/888/2014, was filed against the June 20, 2014, judgment that had authorized GTBank to enforce the foreclosure. The bank was the sole respondent in the case.
Representing the appellants, Dr Charles Adeogun-Phillips (SAN) argued that the second appellant had not signed the contested deed. While RCN Network admitted to signing, they disputed the authenticity of the tripartite legal mortgage submitted by the bank.
Abiola alleged that the execution page containing his supposed signature had been fraudulently taken from a different document and attached to the mortgage deed.
Justice Bassi supported this claim, stating: “The discrepancies in GTBank’s mortgage documents undermined their validity.” He pointed to inconsistencies in pagination, explaining that while the mortgage deed pages were numbered “2 of 9” to “9 of 9,” the execution page was marked “11 of 17,” clearly from another document.
“This inconsistency in pagination alone casts a serious cloud over the authenticity of the mortgage deed,” he ruled.
The appellants also accused GTBank of improperly merging two distinct loan facilities without consent. According to them, the bank used a document tied to a N508 million loan to foreclose on a separate N1 billion loan, even after recovering pledged shares for the former.
Although police reports into the forgery claims offered conflicting conclusions — with one suggesting arbitration and another dismissing the allegations — the Court of Appeal found them inadequate in addressing the document irregularities.
“The lower court failed in its duty by ignoring these material discrepancies and focusing solely on interpreting Clause 6 of a suspect document. A court cannot base its judgment on a document whose integrity is in serious doubt,” Justice Bassi ruled.
He concluded that GTBank had no legal right to appoint a receiver or initiate foreclosure on the Ikoyi property, describing the mortgage as “fundamentally flawed.”
Accordingly, the Court of Appeal nullified the earlier ruling of the Federal High Court and invalidated the foreclosure. Each party was directed to bear its own legal costs.
Justice Bassi added, “The obvious conclusion is that the lower court was in error in determining the rights of the parties based on a contentious document allegedly forged. This court cannot endorse the decision of the lower court on this basis. I therefore resolve the issue in favour of the appellant.”
Justices Polycarp Kwahar and Abdulaziz Anka agreed with Justice Bassi, thereby unanimously setting aside the lower court’s decision.
