In a major move on Friday, the Supreme Court of Nigeria struck down a deeply troubling litigation tactic that threatened the very foundation of fair hearing in Nigeria’s justice system.
At the centre of the controversy was an extraordinary and dangerous proposition: that a plaintiff, having instituted an action for debt recovery, could, through a receiver appointed at his own instance—also determine the legal representation of the defendant in that same action.
In effect, the plaintiff /claimant would control both the prosecution and the defence. This is the implication of the January 13, 2026 decision of the Court of Appeal by Justice Yargata Nimpar, Justice Polycarp Terna Kwahar, and Justice Danlami Zama Senchi.
By disqualifying the legal counsels that were properly appointed by Neconde and Nestoil, and by recognising that a challenged receiver was the sole authority competent to appoint legal counsel for the companies in a dispute where the appointment of the receiver was under judicial scrutiny, the Court of Appeal erroneously struck at the heart of Constitutional Right to Fair Hearing enshrined in Section 36 of the Nigerian Constitution. This was not merely a procedural irregularity; it was a fundamental assault on justice.
The Supreme Court specifically faulted the Court of Appeal’s January 13, 2026 decision, which had disqualified Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN and Dr Muiz Banire SAN that Neconde and Nestoil appointed as their counsel, and recognised the receiver as the sole authority competent to appoint counsel for the companies.
Describing that position as erroneous, the Supreme Court held that the Court of Appeal failed to appreciate the conflict inherent in allowing a receiver, whose appointment was under judicial scrutiny, to control the company’s legal representation.
In a unanimous judgement read by Justice Mohammed Baba Idris, the five-member apex court panel held that where the legality of a receiver’s appointment was itself in dispute, such a receiver could not assume the authority to appoint counsel to represent the company in the same proceedings.
Justice Idris stated that the questions submitted by the lenders before the trial court sought judicial interpretation on critical issues, including whether the lenders were entitled to enforce security, appoint a receiver, and whether the receiver could lawfully exercise powers under that appointment.
According to the Supreme Court, these questions strike at the “very foundation” of the receivership, rather than relating to routine management or realisation of assets.
“It would occasion a conflict of interest,” the court held, “for a receiver appointed by parties whose rights are being challenged to also determine the legal representation of the company in the same proceedings.”
The apex court emphasised that the receiver’s authority was derived from the very transaction under challenge, making it improper for such a receiver to control the company’s legal defence in a suit questioning that authority.
Legal analysts, hailing the decision of the apex court, concurred that an arrangement under which a challenged/disputed receiver was allowed to control a company’s legal defence, offended the core principle of adversarial litigation, where each party was entitled to independently present its case through counsel of their own choosing.
It is also an attack on the constitutional right to fair hearing under Section 36, which guarantees every litigant the freedom to select legal representation without interference.
The overturning of the erroneous Court of Appeal judgement by the Supreme Court, in effect, amounts to a firm rejection of the notion that receivership can be weaponised to silence opposition or predetermine outcomes.
The apex court’s stance makes it clear that no party—no matter how strategically positioned—can appropriate the legal voice of its adversary.
The ruling restores a critical balance. It reaffirms that receivers, even where validly appointed, cannot be used as instruments of procedural domination, nor can statutory mechanisms override constitutional protections.
More importantly, it sends a powerful message to litigants and lower courts alike: the machinery of justice must never be manipulated into a tool of oppression.
In defending the independence of legal representation, the Supreme Court has corrected a grave injustice.
A History of Injustice ??:
On Thursday, November 27, 2025, at exactly 2pm, Justice Yargata Nimpar delivered a ‘ruling’.
The said decision came on a Motion Ex-parte, which was allegedly not heard nor argued in open court, yet it surfaced, fully written, signed, stamped, and delivered as though it had lived a full life on the Court of Appeal docket. Other members of the panel included Justice Polycarp Terna Kwahar.
The controversies over wide ranging ex-parte applications, it would seem, has found its way to the Court of Appeal, an intermediate court with limited original jurisdiction as donated to it by statute.
Barely a few weeks earlier, on the 22nd of October 2025, the same plaintiffs (who later became the appellants in the Court of Appeal) had obtained from Justice Dehinde Dipeolu of the Federal High Court, Lagos, unprecedented far reaching Ex parte Orders and Mareva Injunctions against Nestoil and Neconde. No opportunity was given to the companies to be heard or to defend themselves. The order was procured behind their backs.
The plaintiffs were essentially claiming an alleged debt against the defendants. The main relief sought by the plaintiffs was the propriety or otherwise of appointing a receiver over the assets of the defendants. The defendants instructed different counsel to represent them. Muiz Banire, SAN, was briefed to represent Nestoil Limited, while the firm of Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, was briefed to represent Neconde Limited. Chino Obiagwu, SAN, and the law firm of Chief Afe Babalola, SAN, were briefed to represent two of the directors, who were also sued in the action.
As expected, the defendants, against whom the ex parte orders had been obtained, challenged those orders.
The irregularities and extreme nature of the ex parte orders and mareva injunctions granted in favour of the plaintiffs eventually culminated in the transfer of the suit from Justice Dipeolu to another judge of the Federal High Court.
In a major legal victory for Nestoil Limited and Neconde, the Federal High Court on Thursday November 20, 2025 vacated the mareva injunction that had been granted by Justice Dipeolu and also declared that the disputed ex parte order, which he granted, had lapsed and was no longer in effect following the expiration of the required 14 days, in accordance with the Federal High Court Rules.
The court also ordered the parties to maintain status quo and adjourned the Motion on Notice for hearing by the consent of the parties.
At the hearing of the application to set aside, two other law firms said to be representing the receiver surfaced to contest the legal representation of Dr Muiz Banire chambers and that of Chief Wole Olanipekun. After hearing all sides, the trial judge merely recorded those two other law firms as representing the receiver, who was not a party to the action, while Dr Muiz Banire, SAN, and Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, were formally recorded as representing Nestoil Limited and Neconde Limited, respectively. The suit was thereafter adjourned for definite hearing of the substantive application under an accelerated hearing regime.
Despite the pending motion at the Federal High Court, the plaintiffs somehow filed a similar application at the Court of Appeal, which then granted an order ex-parte directing the lower court not to take any further steps, including determining the pending application earlier filed by the plaintiffs (now appellants).
‘A Case That Never Existed — Yet Received Judgement ‘
The above title is from reports culled from the Daily Times Nigeria and Nigerian Concord, which called it the “Most Shocking Appeal Court Judgement in Nigerian History”.
When the Court of Appeal’s official list for the day was released, nothing seemed amiss. No controversial cases. No unexpected hearings.
But somewhere inside the dusty chambers of bureaucracy, a file was already being prepared and by 2pm, a judgement carrying the signatures of an entire Appeal Court panel had surfaced — even though it was alleged that none of them had appeared in open court and the case itself had never been argued before any High Court, making an appellate ruling legally impossible.
By evening, whispers had turned into rumblings. Court workers who handled the mysterious document reported unusual instructions: No public sitting; No mention on the court list; No access to case filings; No digital record and No audio recording of proceedings. Yet an order was made retrospectively to undo a completed act! Which is yet another impossibility in law, because the ex parte order cannot restore what has been already executed.
“It was like dealing with a ghost file,” one clerk said. “It appeared from nowhere and disappeared into official archives as though it had always existed.”
This judgement, once delivered, spread like wildfire, with legal scholars calling it “a constitutional impossibility.” Veterans said they had never seen anything similar since the 1970s.
An application can only be hinged upon a valid Notice of Appeal against a decision of a lower court before any application can be entertained at the Court of Appeal.
It was alleged that no Notice of Appeal had been filed nor served on the respondents; no parties had been invited to Settle Records and no Records of Appeal had been transmitted.
A Shocking Departure From Judicial Norms
The Lagos Court of Appeal’s decision to grant ex parte orders in FBN Quest & Another vs. Nestoil & Others stunned the legal community, as Ex-parte rulings are meant for rare emergencies and are hardly exercised by appellate courts.
By acting without hearing both sides, while the matter was already before the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal undermined the principle of natural justice and distorted its own role.
An Abuse of Ex Parte Orders?
Ex parte orders, by their very nature, are exceptional remedies. Nigerian courts have consistently held that such orders are to be granted only in cases of real urgency, where giving notice to the opposing party would defeat the very purpose of the application. In Kotoye v. Central Bank of Nigeria, the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear that ex parte injunctions are temporary, rare, and must not be used to confer undue advantage on one party.
Yet, in the present case, the plaintiffs extended the practice of obtaining ex parte orders to the Court of Appeal—an arena where such orders are virtually unheard of in the absence of extreme and demonstrable urgency.
Upon eventual service of the Court of Appeal ex parte orders obtained by the plaintiffs, FBN Quest and FBN Trustees, the defendants Neconde/Nestoil challenged the orders.
The plaintiffs/appellants had, prior to filing the ex parte application at the Court of Appeal, already filed a motion on notice for injunctions, signalling inter partes proceedings, on November 21, 2025, before subsequently filing an ex parte application on November 26, 2025, which was granted on November 27, 2025.
The applications contesting the legal representations of the defendants were subsequently brought by law firms briefed by the receiver appointed by the plaintiffs, who had instituted the action and who had voluntarily stayed the proceedings at the trial court.
Sensing that the hearing of their substantive application to set aside the fresh ex parte orders was being truncated, the defendants approached the Supreme Court to challenge the grant of those Court of Appeal ex parte orders and also prayed for their suspension. At the hearing of those applications before the apex court, the plaintiffs brought applications challenging the legal representation for the defendants.
The Supreme Court referred the parties back to the Court of Appeal for a determination of the issue of legal representation, which was already pending before that court. That application was subsequently argued before the Court of Appeal, coincidentally before the same panel (with the exception of one member that recused himself) that had granted the ex parte orders, which was being challenged.
While it was the contention of the plaintiffs/applicants that a receiver had allegedly been appointed over the defendants’ companies and that the defendants no longer had any say in the affairs of the companies, even beyond issues of management, it was the contention of the defendant/respondents that, in the first place, the suit was not a receivership action, and, indeed, one of the substantive reliefs still pending before the trial court was the validity or otherwise of appointing a receiver, as sought by the plaintiffs themselves.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal applied the general principle that once a receiver is appointed, the authority of the board of directors ceases entirely, and in effect held that the board of directors could not appoint lawyers to defend the alleged debt claim against them and could only be represented by counsel appointed by the receiver, who himself was appointed at the instance of the same plaintiffs.
Graphically put, this implies that the plaintiff, who instituted the action for debt, through his own lawyers, would also, through his appointed receiver, determine the lawyers who would defend the defendants in that same action.
A Disturbing Role By the Court of Appeal
While litigants may be tempted to push the boundaries of advocacy, the courts remain the ultimate gatekeepers of justice. By accepting the plaintiffs’ position that a receiver—appointed at their own instance—could dictate legal representation for the defendants, the court endorsed a situation that offends both logic and fairness. It is a foundational principle of justice that no party should be a judge in its own cause. Yet, here, the plaintiffs, through their appointed receiver, effectively sought to control both sides of the litigation.
This runs counter to the constitutional guarantee of fair hearing under Section 36 of the Nigerian Constitution, which includes the right of a party to choose its own legal representation.
The Constitutional Question
The central issue that was then brought before the Supreme Court was both profound and far-reaching: can a litigant, directly or indirectly, impose legal representation on its adversary? And can a statutory provision override the constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel?
The Supreme Court’s answer, grounded in both law and common sense, was a resounding no.
The right to counsel is not a procedural luxury; it is a fundamental pillar of justice. To allow an opposing party—especially one with vested interests—to dictate that representation is to erode the adversarial system itself. It transforms litigation into a charade, where outcomes are pre-determined and opposition is merely symbolic.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court pronouncement on Friday, April 10, 2026, sets an important precedent—reasserting that justice in Nigeria cannot be ambushed, manipulated, or controlled by one party at the expense of another.
Wale Igbintade
