Kessington Adebutu's firm battles N50m debt suit over National Stadium deal
A Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court will on Monday deliver a ruling on whether to halt proceedings in a N50 million debt suit involving GreenArps Project Limited, a company owned by lottery magnate Kessington Adebutu, popularly known as Baba Ijebu.
The firm is seeking a stay of proceedings in a suit filed by Raji Adeshina, who claims that he and a consortium of technical partners helped GreenArps secure the 2023 concession of the National Stadium in Lagos but were not fully paid for their services.
At the hearing on Friday, GreenArps’ lawyer, Babatunde Ige, urged the court to suspend the trial pending the outcome of their appeal challenging the court’s jurisdiction.
Ige argued that the writ of summons served on the company was unsigned and therefore invalid, claiming it robbed the court of the authority to entertain the case.
“Where the writ is unsigned, there is no valid writ to activate the jurisdiction of this court,” Ige told the court, urging it to await the outcome of their appeal filed at the Court of Appeal, Abuja.
But Adeshina’s counsel, Austine Otah, countered that the appeal was not yet properly entered at the appellate court and should not obstruct proceedings.
He argued that GreenArps had not even filed a substantive defence to the suit and was merely attempting to delay justice.
“They’ve attached nothing to show that the appeal is ripe for hearing at the Court of Appeal,” Otah said, urging the trial judge, Justice Abdulraman Usman, to dismiss the application as an abuse of court process.
The suit, marked CV/57/2025, was filed on January 10 and seeks a court order directing GreenArps to pay an outstanding N50 million, plus accrued interest, to the consortium.
The amount, Adeshina claims, represents unpaid professional fees for services that led to GreenArps’ successful stadium concession bid in November 2023.
Rather than respond to the claims, GreenArps initially filed a preliminary objection on jurisdictional grounds, citing the allegedly unsigned writ.
After listening to arguments on both sides on Friday, Justice Usman reserved his ruling for May 19.
