A High Court sitting in Port Harcourt has ruled that a Skyebank customer, Benedicta Onwuamaegbu, and her company, Madif Engineering Services Limited, jointly and severally breached contract with Iniruo Wills (Claimant), Managing Partner of a Port Harcourt–based law firm, Ntephe, Smith and Wills.
The firm had been engaged to recover a wrongful debit of two hundred and twenty million naira (N 220 million from their account with Skyebank (now Polaris Bank).
Following the wrongful debit, Onwuamaegbu, acting for herself and as Managing Director of Madif Engineering Services Limited, issued a letter of instruction on July 3, 2017, authorising Ntephe, Smith and Wills to commence legal action against the bank.
It was gathered that the firm immediately activated the mandate, writing demand letters, submitting petitions to regulatory bodies, and attending meetings with the office of the Deputy Governor, Consumer Protection, at the Central Bank of Nigeria headquarters in Abuja.
According to the certified true copy of the judgment delivered on October 30, 2025, and made available to journalists, Onwuamaegbu and her company, who are both defendants in the Suit No. PHC/3071/CS/2022 “unilaterally made and persisted in several unorthodox moves to also seek recovery of the wrongfully debited sum against the Claimant’s advice.”
The landmark judgment noted that after the failure of these back-channel efforts, efforts which repeatedly impeded the law firm's extensive work, the first defendant (Madif Engineering Services Limited) issued a letter dated February 18, 2020, reaffirming the instruction with revised terms.
The second defendant, Onwuamaegbu, also assured the firm that she would no longer take steps that would slow down their work.
Relying on these assurances, the law firm prepared processes for filing a second lawsuit against Polaris Bank, after withdrawing an earlier lawsuit on the defendants’ insistence.
However, he encountered obstacles when Onwuamaegbu allegedly became evasive and uncooperative for several months, failing to sign her witness statement on oath for filing.
Matters escalated when, after months of delay, she informed a colleague of Mr. Wills that she had engaged a different law firm, while still owing the agreed professional fees.
Earlier, Onwuamaegbu had also presented another legal practitioner to be added to her legal team, a proposal Mr. Wills accepted on the condition that it be put in writing, and acting in good faith, he had handed over copies of the court processes already prepared.
Delivering judgment, Justice M.O. Opara held that: “The Defendants’ act of debriefing or purporting to debrief the Claimant without payment of the Claimant's agreed professional fees, after instructing, reinstructing and leading on the Claimant for over four years to pursue, at the Claimant’s expense, the recovery of a wrongfully debited sum of two hundred and twenty million naira and the interest thereon, is a breach of contract duly entered by the parties.”
The Court, therefore, ordered that:
“The Defendants shall jointly and severally pay to the Claimant the sum of forty-four million naira (N44.million) being and representing the Claimant’s professional fees as agreed by the parties, as well as interest compounded at the rate of 10 per cent per annum on the total judgment sum from the date of judgment until the entire sum is liquidated.”
The court held that the Claimant had proven he had "incurred expenses, time, and energy in carrying out the Defendants’ brief" while the Defendants offered no justification for the manner in which they debriefed the firm.
Speaking to journalists, Counsel to Iniruo Wills, Barrister Chigozie Inwere, hailed the judgement as a sound one.
"Nigerian courts have established in a long line of cases that lawyers cannot be used and dumped at will without being paid agreed professional fees, after diligently undertak
ing clients’ instructions.”
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