Court dismisses appeal against former SEC DG, Okereke–Onyiuke — Godwin Dunia

An Appeal Court sitting in Lagos yesterday dismissed the appeal filed by the Nigeria Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the ruling of Justice Mohammed Idris.

The ruling had nullified the removal of Ndidi Okereke-Onyiuke as the Director General of SEC, even as the court ordered the Commission to pay the former DG the sum of N500 million.

The lower court had in its judgment also declared the removal as irrational and hasty, adding that the removal did not complied with the precedents.
But in its notice of appeal, SEC maintained that Okereke-Onyiuke’s sack was in line with the statutory powers to protect the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), the interest of the public and the Nigerian economy, and urged the court to set aside the judgment.

At the hearing yesterday, Okereke-Onyiuke’s lawyer, Michael Akintayo, prayed the court to take cognisance of a notice of discontinuance filed by the appellant.However, counsel to SEC, Mrs. Imaoboy, urged the court to ignore the notice of discontinuance,adding that it was filed in error. The panel presided over by Justice U.I Ndukwe-Anyanwu, pointed out that SEC had filed notice of discontinuance of the appeal and that the appeal could not be resuscitated, adding “you cannot build something on nothing, the appeal had ceased to exist before the court the moment notice of discontinuance was filed.”Okereke-Onyiuke had in her suit challenged the propriety of her removal by SEC and sought to restrain the commission and its agents from treating and relating to her “as a removed DG of the NSE.”

She had said that she was done with the NSE, having tendered her resignation letter before her sack, adding that she harbours no grudge against her former employer.

She added that she was neither seeking to be reinstated nor did she intend to disrupt the on-going efforts by the interim management to reorganise and restructure the stock market.