GTBank Grossly Underrated Innoson -By Azuka Onwuka

It wrote off Chief Innocent Chukwuma as “illiterate Igbo trader”, “illiterate Nnewi trader” with no liver or time for court cases.

It is the same reason police men prefer to be posted to Anambra State – especially the Onitsha-Nnewi axis, where they believe the traders don’t like going to police station or court. They would prefer to “settle” the police and go their way. But the same police men don’t like to be posted to Imo (especially the Owerri-Mbaise axis) or Enugu city where civil servants and lecturers have the patience to pursue cases and make life miserable for police people with court cases and petitions.

But Innoson surprised GTBank with his patience and doggedness.

This case the company just won against GTBank is just one of the two cases at the Supreme Court. This one is the case about its goods the Nigerian Customs seized and auctioned to politicians in 2004 (when Obasanjo was president.) The Court asked Nigerian Customs to pay Innoson but GTBank jumped into the case and appealed.

The second case is that of GTBank making clandestine deductions from Innoson amounting to about N600 million – ie secretly stealing from Innoson like most banks do to their unwary customers. Innoson asked GTBank to pay back at the 22 percent interest rate it was charging Innoson for the loan it lent it, but GTBank said that the best it would do was to pay back at 7 percent interest rate. It wanted to pay Innoson at the ridiculous rate it pays its depositors. So Innoson went to court. The High Court and Appeal Court ruled in its favour but GTBank went to the Supreme Court. It even got the EFCC to harass Chief Chukwuma and intimidate him to make him succumb, accusing the man and his company of sundry issues.

Innoson is awaiting the judgement of the Supreme Court on that case. In 2014 the amount GTBank would pay Innoson for the fraudulent deductions stood at 5.9 billion naira. In 2018, it stood at 14 billion. It continues to rise everyday.

In all this, Chief Chukwuma refused to be intimidated or discouraged. The upper hand he has is that the appeal court had ordered GTBank to pay him at an interest rate of 22 percent. So with the passing of each day, the amount GTBank will pay increases.

Caveat: The issue between GTBank and Innoson has little or nothing to do with ethnicity. It is a case of big corporations vs soft target. Big corporations always believe they have the financial muscle and connections to intimidate and wear out the soft target, even when it is clear to them that they are wrong.