The Court of Appeal in Abuja has set aside a Federal Capital Territory High Court judgment that had held Fidelity Bank Plc liable in a fundamental rights suit brought by a customer over his arrest and detention.
A three-member panel led by Justice Adebukola Banjoko delivered the judgment on 14 September 2026, allowing the bank’s appeal and reversing the lower court’s finding, according to court records.
The suit was filed by Michael Kundera, who said his rights were breached during his arrest and detention between 15 and 16 May 2023. He argued that he was neither charged before a court nor granted bail within that period.
The FCT High Court, presided over by Justice Peter Kekemeke, had earlier found that Kundera’s rights were violated and awarded N10m against Fidelity Bank, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and former EFCC chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa.
Kundera had also linked the dispute to a parcel of land at the Foreign Affairs Quarters in Abuja, which he claimed belonged to him.
Fidelity Bank challenged that ruling at the appellate court. Its central argument was that the evidence placed before the trial court did not establish any link between the bank and the alleged violation of Kundera’s constitutional rights.
The bank said its own role began with a petition it sent to the EFCC. According to its case, the petition concerned alleged criminal conduct by entities that had obtained a N100m loan procurement order from the bank for a specific project, funds it said were later diverted for personal use.
On that basis, the bank maintained that Kundera was not the subject of its petition, and that there was therefore no ground to hold it responsible for what happened to him after the matter reached the commission.
The appellate panel agreed. It held that there was no credible evidence before the trial court showing that Fidelity Bank had infringed Kundera’s fundamental rights.
The court also found that Kundera failed to discharge the burden of proof required to establish wrongdoing by the bank sufficient to justify the reliefs the lower court had granted.
The distinction the court drew is a familiar one in rights litigation. A complainant who reports a suspected crime to an investigative agency is not automatically answerable for the steps that agency later takes. Liability has to be tied to specific conduct by the party accused, and the appellate court found that link missing in the bank’s case.
The judgment does not disturb the underlying question of how Kundera was treated in custody. What it settles, for now, is that Fidelity Bank is not the party liable for it. The position of the EFCC and Bawa in relation to the original award was not part of the bank’s appeal and was not addressed in this ruling.
For banks, the outcome carries a practical signal. Financial institutions routinely petition the EFCC and other agencies over suspected loan fraud and diversion, and the fear of being drawn into rights suits arising from arrests that follow can weigh on that decision. The ruling supports the view that a petition, on its own, does not transfer responsibility for an agency’s conduct to the institution that raised the alarm.
It also fits a wider pattern in recent fundamental rights litigation involving the EFCC, where courts have repeatedly examined how far the commission and third parties can be held jointly liable for arrests and account restrictions. Several such cases have turned on the same issue the appellate court raised here, whether the evidence actually connects each named party to the specific breach alleged.
Kundera retains the option of pursuing the matter further, including a possible appeal to the Supreme Court, though no such step has been confirmed. Any decision to press the claim against the remaining parties would proceed separately from the appeal the bank has now won.
The parties had not, at the time of filing, issued detailed public statements on the appellate judgment. The written judgment of the panel remains the authoritative record of the court’s reasoning.