By Abdulwahab Abdulah
Shareholders of Afribank Plc, yesterday, accused the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and its governor, Lamido Sanusi, of filing processes to deliberately frustrate quick deter-mination of their suit querying the nationali-sation of the bank.

In a motion challenging an application for stay of proceedings filed against CBN by the shareholders, they argued that CBN and its governor only filed its motion for stay of the earlier order of the court to frustrate diligent prosecution of their case.

Trial Judge, Justice James Tsoho, of the Federal High Court, Lagos, had, in a ruling, held that the CBN governor did not have absolute power to hire and fire bank directors, only for him to give the affected directors opportunity of fair hearing.

However, the bank and its governor, who were the defendants, filed an appeal against the ruling, with a motion for stay of proceedings, pending the determi-nation of the appeal.

As the matter was still pending, the apex bank in collaboration with the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, and Nigerian Deposits Insurance Corporation, NDIC, nationalised Afribank.

Subsequently, the shareholders, through their lawyer, Onyebuchi Aniakor, filed a motion to nullify the nationali-sation on the ground that it was a clear act of disrespect to the court.

When the matter came up yesterday, Aniakor told Justice Tsoho that he had filed a motion to challenge the various motions for stay of proceedings filed by the defendants and that the defendants went to sleep and failed to compile records of appeal within the 90 days stipulated by law after the ruling of the court.