CaseLaw
Orunengimo V. Egebe (2007) CLR 7(i) (SC)
Judgement delivered on July 13th 2007
Brief
Facts
The action on a land dispute from which this appeal arose was fought between the Appellants as Plaintiffs and the Respondents as Defendants in representative capacities for and on behalf of their respective families before the Rivers State High Court of Justice Port-Harcourt. The matter which was commenced since 1975 by a writ of summons, was heard on pleadings exchanged between the parties. In the course of the hearing of the case at the trial Court, the Appellants/Plaintiffs called seven witnesses to prove their case for declaration of title to the parcel of land in dispute. The Respondents/Defendants on their part called five witnesses to support their case asserting title to the same parcel of land.
The case of the Appellants/Plaintiffs was that the parcel of land in dispute is part of their family land; that their family allowed one Donald Egebe, who was the Respondents/Defendants' ancestor, to settle temporarily on part of their family land, on the condition that he was only to build a thatch house. It was part of the Appellants/Plaintiffs' case that no portion or part of their family land was at any time ever sold by the family or by any member of the family to the ancestor of the Respondents/Defendants, Donald Egebe.
The Respondents/Defendants however, in their defence to the action against them had asserted title to the land in dispute claiming to have bought the same through their ancestor Donald Egebe from one Kanti, a member of the Appellants/Plaintiffs' family sometime in December, 1930. The Respondents/Defendants also denied part of the case against them that their ancestor Donald Egebe was merely allowed to settle temporarily on the land, maintaining that Donald Egebe was on the land in dispute by virtue of purchase of the same under Native Law and Custom.
It was a common ground between the parties that the land in dispute originally belong to the family of the Appellants/Plaintiffs from whom the Respondents/Defendants are claiming to have bought the same under Native Law and Custom in 1930. The question therefore was whether or not the Respondents/Defendants upon whom the burden of proof had shifted upon admitting that the original title to the land in dispute lay with the Appellants/Plaintiffs, had succeeded in proving a valid sale and transfer of title to them under Native Law and Custom. The learned trial Judge in his judgment delivered on 4th February, 1986 at the end of the hearing, dismissed the Appellants/ Plaintiffs' claim for declaration of title to the land in dispute having made a finding that the land in dispute was sold by the Appellants/Plaintiffs' family to Donald Egebe, the Respondents/Defendants' ancestor.
Dissatisfied with the judgment of the learned trial Judge the Appellants/ Plaintiffs appealed to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal dismissed the Appellants/Plaintiffs' appeal.
Still dissatisfied the Appellants/Plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court.