Fourteen Years to Collect a Judgment: How Customs Tried to Dodge Its Own Debt: C.B.N. v. Lidan Eng. Ltd. [2026] 12 NWLR (Pt. 2053) 35 — Supreme Court of Nigeria


Fourteen Years to Collect a Judgment: How Customs Tried to Dodge Its Own Debt

C.B.N. v. Lidan Eng. Ltd. [2026] 12 NWLR (Pt. 2053) 35 — Supreme Court of Nigeria

Winning a court case is one thing. Actually getting paid is sometimes an entirely different battle — and this case is a masterclass in just how long that second battle can drag on. A group of importers won a ₦320 million judgment against the Nigerian Customs Service for wrongfully auctioning their containers. Then it took them roughly fourteen years, and a trip all the way to the Supreme Court, just to get their hands on the money — with Customs and the Central Bank of Nigeria throwing up one procedural obstacle after another along the way.

The Facts

Lidan Engineering, Johns Express Agencies, Hopevile & Green, and Mr. Chuks Agoha imported six containers into Nigeria from the United States. The Nigerian Customs Service wrongly and unlawfully auctioned all six containers off and then ignored every attempt by the importers to secure compensation. Left with no other option, the importers sued the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Service Board, the Comptroller-General of Customs, and the Attorney-General of the Federation at the Federal High Court, seeking ₦470 million in damages. Customs filed a defence but never actually showed up with evidence to contest the claim, appearing only once through a single officer. The trial court entered judgment for the importers in the sum of ₦320 million. Customs never appealed and never paid.

The importers then commenced garnishee proceedings against the Central Bank of Nigeria, since Customs' funds were held there under the Federal Government's Treasury Single Account policy. What followed was years of resistance: Customs first tried arguing that its own name had changed — from the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Service Board to the Nigerian Customs Service — so the judgment, made against the old name, supposedly couldn't be enforced against the new one. Separately, the Central Bank argued it counted as a "public officer" under the Sheriffs and Civil Process Act, meaning the garnishee proceedings needed the Attorney-General's prior consent to even get started.

The Journey Through the Courts

Along the way, Customs filed a motion for stay of execution, abandoned it, filed a motion to set aside the judgment, abandoned that too, then refiled the same motion to set it aside a second time — also abandoned — before finally getting a third such motion heard on its merits and dismissed by the Federal High Court in 2018. Customs appealed that dismissal but never bothered to prosecute the appeal.

Six years after the original judgment, the importers finally commenced garnishee proceedings against the Central Bank. The trial court rejected both the Central Bank's public-officer argument and Customs' name-change argument, and made the garnishee order absolute against the Nigerian Customs Service's account. The Central Bank appealed to the Court of Appeal, which dismissed the appeal. Still unsatisfied, the Central Bank pushed on to the Supreme Court — and, unusually, the Comptroller-General of Customs, though technically a respondent, filed a brief actually siding with the Central Bank and urging the Supreme Court to allow the appeal.

The Court's Reasoning

Garnishee proceedings are their own unique animal. The Court described garnishee proceedings as sui generis — a distinct method of enforcing a monetary judgment where ordinary methods of execution simply don't apply. Instead, the court orders a third party holding money owed to the judgment debtor to pay that money directly to the judgment creditor. The process runs in two stages: first a garnishee order nisi (from the Norman-French word for "unless"), directing payment unless the garnishee shows sufficient reason not to pay, and then, absent such a reason, a garnishee order absolute — which the Court confirmed is a final order of court, not a mere interlocutory step.

A garnishee just needs to be holding the debtor's money — nothing more exotic than that. The Court defined a garnishee simply as a third party indebted to, or holding money belonging to, the judgment debtor, who is then called upon to pay the judgment creditor directly out of that debt or credit.

The Central Bank isn't a "public officer" for this purpose — and the Court wasn't about to relitigate that question. This was the heart of the Central Bank's appeal. Section 84 of the Sheriffs and Civil Process Act requires the Attorney-General's consent before a garnishee order can touch money in the custody of a public officer. The Court leaned on the doctrine of stare decisis, finding that an earlier Supreme Court decision involving the Central Bank on essentially identical facts had already settled that the Central Bank is not a public officer for these purposes. Where a word or phrase has already received a definitive judicial interpretation, courts are bound to apply that same meaning going forward rather than reopening the question each time. Since no public officer was involved as garnishee, the consent requirement simply never arose.

A judgment can be enforced against people who were never named in the original suit. The Court also addressed Customs' name-change argument, pointing to Order II Rule 16 of the Judgment (Enforcement) Rules, which allows a judgment or order to be enforced against, or in favour of, someone who wasn't formally a party to the original proceeding. The Court found ample evidence — including Customs' own failure to counter the importers' sworn depositions — that the Nigerian Customs Service was, in substance, the same judgment debtor operating under a changed name, with the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Service Board managing and superintending its revenue collection and accountability. The rebranding exercise didn't erase the debt.

Not every government body is a "Federal Government agency," and it matters which one. The Court drew a careful distinction: an agency of the Federal Government is a body established by law through which government functions are carried out. The Comptroller-General of Customs and the Attorney-General of the Federation, being appointive offices held by individuals, aren't agencies at all. The Customs, Immigration and Prisons Service Board and the Nigerian Customs Service, by contrast, are genuine Federal Government agencies — and, as such, are among the Ministries, Departments and Agencies required to keep their funds in the Treasury Single Account at the Central Bank, which is precisely how the importers were able to trace and attach Customs' money there in the first place.

A respondent can't use its brief to argue the appeal should succeed. The Court flagged something procedurally improper along the way: the Comptroller-General of Customs, though a respondent to the appeal, had filed a brief supporting the Central Bank's case rather than defending the judgment under appeal. The Court held this was not permissible — a respondent's role is to defend the decision being appealed, and if a party actually wants a lower court's decision overturned, the proper route is to appeal or cross-appeal it, not to smuggle that argument into a respondent's brief. That portion of the Comptroller-General's brief was struck out.

A pointed message to lawyers who help clients dodge judgments. In a notable passage, one member of the panel didn't hold back. Throughout the roughly fourteen years since judgment was entered, Customs and its co-respondents never once contested the underlying case on its merits — they simply used the court's own processes, motion after abandoned motion, to delay the importers from ever collecting what they were owed, eventually pulling the Central Bank into the fight as well. The judgment observed that this pattern, made possible by lawyers willing to carry out their clients' wishes rather than push back, does real damage to public confidence in the justice system — confidence the judgment described as the very foundation of social order, without which the system can drift toward disorder. Lawyers, the Court said, owe a duty to the profession and the society that trained them to conduct themselves in ways that bring honour to the justice system, not to let themselves be used to bring it into disrepute.

The Verdict

The Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the Central Bank's appeal, affirming the Court of Appeal's decision and the garnishee order absolute made against the Nigerian Customs Service's account with the Central Bank — finally clearing the way, roughly fourteen years on, for the importers to collect their judgment.

Key Takeaways

  • Garnishee proceedings are a distinct, sui generis enforcement mechanism, running through an order nisi and then an order absolute, which is a final, not interlocutory, order of court.
  • The Central Bank of Nigeria is not treated as a "public officer" under section 84 of the Sheriffs and Civil Process Act, so garnishee proceedings against it do not require the Attorney-General's prior consent — and once the Supreme Court has settled a point of statutory interpretation, it will apply that same meaning consistently rather than revisiting it case by case.
  • A judgment debtor cannot dodge enforcement simply by pointing to a name change. Courts will look at the substance of who the debtor actually is, and enforcement rules allow judgments to reach parties beyond those formally named in the original suit.
  • Not every government office counts as a "Federal Government agency." Individual appointive positions (like a Comptroller-General or Attorney-General) are not agencies; statutory bodies established to carry out government functions are.
  • A respondent in an appeal cannot use its brief to argue that the judgment under appeal was wrong. That requires a proper appeal or cross-appeal — a respondent's job is to defend the decision, not undermine it from the sidelines.
  • Using the court's own processes — repeated motions, appeals never prosecuted — to delay paying a valid judgment is conduct the courts take seriously, and lawyers who facilitate that kind of stalling risk damaging public confidence in the justice system itself.

Test

  1. Is the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) considered a ''public officer'' under section 84 of the Sheriffs and Civil Process Act when acting as a garnishee?
  2. What did the Supreme court say about the duty of legal practitioners regarding the enforcement of court judgments?
  3. Can a garnishee order be enforced against a party not named in the substantive proceedings?

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