The defendant sent an appointment letter to the appellant in confirmation of the defendant’s appointment as the architectural consultants for the designing of the headquarters’ buildings of Niger Agencies International Ltd (The company). He was to contact the NAIL directors.

Appellant then followed the directives of the letter by exchanging letters and in subsequent meetings and correspondence between them, appellant treated and referred to the company as “our clients” and the Ministry of works who wrote the initial letter was completely cut off.

During the course of the contract, some amount of money was outstanding to be paid to the appellant. The company could not pay this before going into liquidation. The appellant directed his claim to the Ministry and after some negotiations, the appellant was offered an ex-gratia payment of N50,000.

Appellant sued the Ministry for the outstanding sum of money but his claim was dismissed and the appeal court confirmed this.

Appellant appealed to the Supreme Court