Nigerian court adjourns case by sacked bank chief

LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian court has deferred hearing a legal challenge by one of five bank chief executives sacked by the central bank in a $2.6 (1.58 billion pounds) bailout until September 14, a court official said on Friday.

The outcome of the challenge by Erastus Akingbola, former head of Intercontinental Bank, is seen as a litmus test of whether new Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi will have the backing he needs to sanitise Nigeria's banking sector.

The central bank two weeks ago bailed out five banks including Intercontinental Bank and sacked their top management, saying lax governance had allowed them to become so weakly capitalised that they posed a systemic risk.

Akingbola asked a Federal High court in the commercial hub of Lagos to reinstate him and grant him a "perpetual injunction" to prevent financial regulators from interfering in his duties as Intercontinental Bank's chief executive. Chief Judge Abdullahi Mustapha, who was originally scheduled to hear the case, told the parties on Thursday he had assigned the case to another judge because he was due for retirement.

Akingbola is the only one of the five sacked chief executives not to have been questioned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria's anti-corruption police, which has said it intends to prosecute the executives.

Local newspapers say he has left the country.

EFCC chief Farida Waziri said on Thursday the agency would enlist the help of Interpol to track him down and detain him.

The EFCC has said some of the loans which crippled the banks were sought using false names, disbursed without approval from the boards of the banks, and in some cases diverted to ventures other than those for which they had been sought.

It has said Akingbola and other executives are wanted in connection with fraud, insider trading and money laundering.

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(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Victoria Main)