The parties in this appeal are members of the same Ayanrinola Akayepe family. They were before the High Court of Justice of Oyo State sitting at Ibadan where the Respondent was the Plaintiff while the Appellants were the Defendants. The dispute between the parties was over the allocation to the Respondent by the head of the family of one shop out of five shops built on the family property at Akayepe Compound, Agboni Ibadan which allocation was resisted by the Appellants/Defendants resulting in the Respondent as Plaintiff filing an action against them by a writ of summons claiming in paragraph 28 of his further amended statement of claim, the following reliefs:

At the trial Court before Oyekan J., the case was duly heard after the exchange of pleadings which were amended on the application of the parties. The case of the Plaintiff was that the shop which the Defendants refused to allow him to occupy and use, is one of the five shops built on vacant un-partitioned part of the Akayepe family land which Madam Folashade Akayepe as the head of the whole Akayepe family with the consent of the majority of the principal members of the family at a family meeting for that purpose, which the Defendants refused to attend, allocated to the Plaintiff for his possession and use. The case of the Defendants however was that the Defendants and the Plaintiff are children of Salami Ayanrinola Akayepe, a descendant of Fagbohun Akayepe who was the original owner of the part of the land upon which one of the live shops in dispute between the parties was built, that the five shops are the properly of the family of Salami Ayanrinola Akayepe and not the property of the whole Akayepe family headed by Madam Folashade Akayepe and as such Madam Folashade Akayepe could not have the right to allocate one of the shops to the Plaintiff.

At the end of the hearing of the parties through their learned Counsel, the learned trial Judge made specific findings on the pleadings and evidence before him that Madam Folashade Opadoyi Akayepe was the head of the Akayepe family made up of the Section of the Plaintiff and the Defendants on one side and that of Madam Folashade on the other; that the portion of the Akayepe family land upon which the five shops were built had not been partitioned, that the entire members of the Akayepe family participated in the transaction that culminated in the building of the five shops on the un-partitioned family land; that the judgments of the High Court and Magistrate Court in suits No. 1/255/87 and CM/2/86 pleaded and relied upon by the Defendants in their defence of res-judicata, were not tendered in evidence and therefore not proved. With these findings, the learned trial Judge therefore entered judgment for the Plaintiff.

The Defendants who were not satisfied with the judgment of the trial Court allowing their own brother to use one of the five shops allocated to him by the family, appealed against the judgment to the Court of Appeal. However, Court of Appeal dismissed the Defendants/Appellants' appeal and affirmed the judgment of the trial Court. Still not happy with the dismissal of their appeal, the Defendants/Appellants appealed further to the Supreme Court.