Facts:

The appellant entered into a contract with the respondent but along the line a dispute arose and based on their contract, the parties sought to settle the dispute through arbitration. The seat of arbitration was in London and the arbitration was to be governed by the London Maritime Arbitrators Association (LMAA) Terms 2012.

Having submitted to arbitration, parties appointed their arbitrators, however, mid-way through the proceedings the appellant terminated the appointment of its arbitrator and failed to replace him. It also had no further representation in the proceeding which resulted to the suspension of proceedings. Nevertheless, in order to make progress and be fair to all parties, the panel sought to serve the Appellant with the Respondent’s resubmitted processes by courier and tracked its delivery.

The panel confirmed delivery of the processes on the Appellant and proceeded to hear the matter in the absence of representation from the Appellant. At the conclusion of the proceeding the panel found in favour of the Respondent. The Respondent armed with the award in its favour proceeded to register it in Nigeria, instituted a garnishee proceeding at the Federal High Court and got judgment in its favour.

Aggrieved, the Appellant filed an application before the court seeking to set aside its judgment but the court refused to grant same.

Dissatisfied with the decision of the court below the Appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal where it sought among other things, the determination of the lower court’s jurisdiction to grant judgment on an arbitral award obtained without jurisdiction of the arbitral panel.