Limitation of Actions: Does The Clock Really Stop Ticking?

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LIMITATION OF ACTIONS: DOES THE CLOCK REALLY STOP TICKING? INTRODUCTION A person will usually have a right to bring an action in court against another person when there has been the violation of a legal right. However this right to bring an action in court is one that is not exercisable in perpetuity due to the operation of the statutes of limitation which limit the time periods within which certain types of actions may be brought by a Claimant. Once this time period limited by the statute of limitation expires, a Claimant’s right of action will be extinguished and become unenforceable against a Defendant and can be referred to as having become statute barred. The resulting effect of a Claimant’s claim becoming statute barred is that such a claim can no longer be properly entertained by a court as the court will, on the claim becoming statute barred, have lost jurisdiction to entertain the claim. Nigeria’s jurisprudence on limitation of actions is not scant and the aforementioned general statement of the law on the effect of a claim becoming statute barred is by no means recondite under Nigerian law. However, in the case of SIFAX NIGERIA LTD V MIGFO NIGERIA LIMITED (2015) LPELR-24655 (CA) (the SIFAX case) the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal recently had to determine an issue in limitation law for which there is scant judicial precedent in Nigeria. The issue was whether upon the filing of an action by a party, time ceases to run for the purposes of the statutes of limitation. This article looks at the decision of the Court of Appeal in the SIFAX case on this narrow point on the law of limitation of actions and considers whether the decision of the court is a welcome development of the law on limitation of actions in Nigeria. FACTS OF THE CASE Sometime in 2005 Sifax and Migfo put up a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly bid for the concessioning and joint management of Terminal ‘C’ of the Tin Can Island Port in Lagos which was then being concessioned by the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Nigerian Ports Authority. A dispute subsequently broke out between the parties with respect to the MOU which resulted in Migfo filing an action


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