By Olumide Babalola
On the 18th day of September 2025, the High Court of Lagos State, presided over by Hon. Justice Olalekan A. Oresanya, delivered a judgment that underscores the growing importance of data protection and accountability in Nigeria’s banking sector.
The case with Suit No. LD/18590MFHR/2024 is not the usual customer-banker dispute. It is a landmark data protection claim, invoking the Nigerian Data Protection Act (NDPA) 2023, a relatively new law designed to protect Nigerians from the misuse and mishandling of their personal data.
The Dispute
Rebecca Bonje, a customer of GTBank, noticed discrepancies in her account records. Transactions were allegedly altered, distorted, or deleted from her statement of account, and at one point, she received two conflicting statements for the same period, which resulted in the loss of a property purchase which she had made in instalments. Feeling misled and unfairly treated, she sought explanations from the bank, but none were forthcoming.
Frustrated, Rebecca took her fight to court, alleging that GTBank’s actions breached the principle of data accuracy, transparency and violated her data subject’s right to correction under the NDPA 2023, as well as her constitutional right to privacy guaranteed by Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution. She prayed the Court for declarations and damages for the bank’s unfair and misleading processing of her financial transactions.
The Court’s Reasoning
In response to the bank’s preliminary objection that the claim was outside the purview of privacy, the court interestingly held that: “The instant claim is premised on an alleged breach of data rights of the Applicant by the Respondent. It seems in my well considered view to be merely incidental that the person in custody of the data in the instant case is a Bank and the owner of the data is a Bank’s customer. To my mind, the principal claim is therefore a breach of data rights which is corollary of Section 37 of the Constitution, as such the grounds upon which the Respondent’s objection are predicated are not arguable and are accordingly discountenanced. The objection is refused and overruled and the application accordingly struck out. This Court therefore has the requisite jurisdiction in respect of this claim.”
The Verdict
The court observed that the bank did not attach any documentary evidence to their counter-affidavit to contradict the documents presented by the customer, hence the court refused to allow bare paragraphs of the counter affidavit to dislodge more credible documentary evidence adduced by the Applicant showing misleading and incorrect entries in her transactions. On the whole the court granted the Applicant’s reliefs and awarded Five Million Naira damages.
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