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Hon. Justice Sanda Yelwa of the Lagos Judicial Division of the National Industrial Court has declared the action of Polaris Bank in blacklisting one Theodora as a bad debtor in the credit bureau, based on an employee loan facility granted to Theodara as unjustifiable and made mala fide.
The Court ordered the Polaris Bank to immediately withdraw any bad credit report made against Theodora to any Credit bureau and ensure that the name of Theodara is removed from the list of bad debtors in the credit bureau’s register.
Justice Yelwa awarded the sum of N3,000,000 (Three Million Naira) as General Damages and the sum of N2,600,000.00 cost of action against Polaris Bank in favour of Theodora.
From facts, the claimant- Theodora had submitted that she was employed by the bank in 2007 and had been in the said employment until July 2010 when her employment was terminated.
Theodora averred that she challenged her employment termination in 2012, and the Court affirmed that her suspension and termination were improper and wrongful.
Theodora posited that sometime in 2020, she sought to obtain a loan facility from a financial institution to support her business and her loan application was denied, and to her dismay, she learnt that her inability to obtain the loan was because the Polaris Bank had blacklisted her name at the credit bureaux, as a bad debtor.
She further averred that she has suffered series of maltreatment at the hands of Polaris Bank as her employer, and the bank continued to maltreat her even after they maliciously terminated her employment.
In defence, the Defendant- Polaris Bank maintained that Theodora was indebted to the Bank as a result of a staff loan she took from the defunct Afri-Bank Plc that it is entitled to recover from Theodora the cumulative sum of N81,012,221.44 (Eighty-One Million, Twelve Thousand, Two Hundred and Twenty-One Naira, Forty-Four kobo which she had failed to pay.
Polaris Bank further stated that the Court lacks the jurisdiction to entertain the suit for the sole reason that the subject matter of the suit does NOT arise from labour, employment, workplace or any dispute connected or related to them but founded on a banker/customer relationship.
In opposition, Theodora's counsel stated that his client is not indebted to Polaris Bank and whilst the employee loan was advanced to her in the course of her employment, the repayment of the loan was deducted from her salary and has been settled, and if there were any outstanding on the loan, Theodora believes that the Mainstreet/Skye-Bank or the Polaris Bank would have made a claim of set-off in the earlier case filed in the year 2012 or netted it off from the judgment debt.
Theodora's learned counsel averred that the dispute is incidental to the employment issues between Theodara and the Polaris Bank and as such, qualifies as an employer/employee dispute, and urged the Court to grant the reliefs sought.
In a well-considered judgment, the Presiding Judge, Justice Sanda Yelwa held that the alleged debt owed was gotten from a staff loan when Theodora was still in the employment of Afri-Bank which falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court.
The Court stated that Polaris Bank has failed to provide any cogent and believable evidence in proof of the alleged indebtedness, that the exhibit tendered was an afterthought and looks like a concocted statement of account.
Justice Yelwa reasoned that apart from Polaris Bank presenting the concocted spreadsheets of numbers made up by the Bank and not based on any account computing algorithm, Polaris Bank did not speak to the evidence it presented to the Court.
The Court ordered the Polaris Bank to immediately withdraw any bad credit report made against Theodora to any Credit bureau and ensure that the name of Theodora is removed from the list of bad debtors in the credit bureau’s register.
The Polaris Bank’s counter-claim was dismissed for lacking merit.
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