Abstract
Laws are generally enacted to deal with problems in the society. This may be in the form of the creation of institutions to achieve some laid down goals. The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) is a child of circumstances birthed by the National Assembly to handle numerous debt cases that arose in Nigeria sometime in 2008 and resulted in the financial distress of several financial institutions in Nigeria. The primary goal for the establishment of AMCON is to recover the debts owed to these financial institutions in order to inject life into the Nigerian financial market. The importance of this government policy led to the enactment of the AMCON Act 2010 and the successive amendments in 2015, 2019 and 2021. The three successive amendments were designed to cover loopholes in the parent 2010 Act. Of material concern to this paper is the AMCON (Amendment) Act 2019. The Act purposefully abolished statute of limitation and made its provisions to have retrospective effect. The effect of this is to obliterate already vested rights of citizens in relation to limitation statutes. The Act also fixed time frames for the hearing and determination of suits filed by the Corporation and appeals form such suits. The AMCON jurisprudence illustrates the relationships between legal doctrines and socio-economic necessities. This paper examines the force, validity and justice, amongst others, of this Amendment Act, the onerous interpretative challenges faced by courts, the self-inflicting aspects of the Act and offers recommendations for all the players involved in the project founded on the AMCON Acts.
Keywords: Retrospective Operation, AMCON (Amendment) Act, 2019 and the Nigerian Statutes of Limitations