Lawani Alli & Anor. V. Chief Gbadamosi Abasi Alesinloye & Ors. (2000)

LAWGLOBAL HUB Lead Judgment Report

IGUH, J.S.C. 

By a writ of summons issued on the 11th day of December, 1987 in the Ibadan Judicial Division of the High Court of Justice, Oyo State, the plaintiffs, for themselves and on behalf of the Oroye family, instituted an action jointly and severally against the 1st to the 5th defendants as representatives of the Alesinloye family and the 6th to the 9th defendants claiming as follows:-

(a) Declaration of Title to a Statutory Right of Occupancy over all that piece or parcel of land situate, lying and being at Igbo-Ori-Oke Express Road, Ibadan, the Survey plan of which is filed with this Statement of Claim.

(b) The sum of N20,000.00 (Twenty Thousand Naira) being special and general damage for continuing acts of trespass committed and still being committed by the defendants on the land in dispute.

(c) An order of injunction restraining the defendants, their servants, agents, privies or any person claiming through or under them from committing further acts of trespass on the said land in dispute”.

Pleadings were ordered in the suit and were duly settled, filed and exchanged. At the subsequent trial, both parties testified on their own behalf and called witnesses.

The case, as presented by the plaintiffs, briefly, is that the land in dispute was originally acquired and owned by Opeagbe, a great warrior in Ibadan over 200 years ago. This original acquisition and ownership of the land in dispute by Opeagbe was by way of first settlement in accordance with the customary law and usage of the people. Opeagbe settled on the land in dispute until about 150 years ago when he granted the land to the plaintiffs’ ancestor, Oroye, another warrior under him by way of an absolute gift in accordance with customary law. Consequently, Oroye took physical possession of the land as soon as Opeagbe made the grant thereof to him and made maximum use thereof by way of erecting huts on the land, cultivating food crops such as yams and planting various economic trees to wit, orange, coffee, kola nuts and oil palm trees thereon. On Oroye’s death, his children and their descendants, that is to say, the plaintiffs, continued to use the land in dispute, inter alia, for farming. They also exercised various acts of ownership and possession over the same, including the prosecution and defending of actions in respect thereof. They tendered Exhibits F and J which are decisions concerning the cases in respect of which they obtained judgment against third parties over the land in dispute. The plaintiffs tendered Exhibit A. the evidence of Oladejo Adeleke Alesinloye, a member of the 1st – 5th defendants’ family in favour of the plaintiffs Oroye family in suit No. 1/165/77 in respect of the land in dispute. They also relied on a confirmation of a customary grant by the Opeagbe family by virtue of a deed made on the 8th day of November, 1972 and registered as No. 55 at page 55 in volume 1427 at the Registry of Deeds kept in the land Registry at Ibadan. This said deed. Exhibit C was executed as mere documentary evidence only on the grant to Oroye family by the Opeagbe family.

The 1st – 5th defendants, on the other hand, resisted the claim of the plaintiffs as owners of the land in dispute. It was their case that their ancestor, Bankole Alesinloye, another warrior and Balogun of Ibadan, about the year 1820 acquired a large piece or parcel of land of which the land in dispute formed a part by settlement under customary law and thereby became the absolute owner thereof. They claimed that the defendants’ ancestor, Bankole Alesinloye, and his family made grants of various portions of the land thus acquired to various families which included the plaintiffs’ Oroye family. The customary grant by the Alesinloye family to Dosunmu, the then head of the plaintiffs’ Oroye family, was made sometime between 1925 and 1929 during the reign of Foko. They denied that Oroye acquired the land in dispute from Opeagbe when, they claimed, did not own any parcel of land in the neighbourhood. They claimed that members of the Alesinloye family exercised acts of ownership on the land in dispute by farming thereon after its acquisition by settlement by the said Bankole Alesinloye.

At the conclusion of hearing, the learned trial Judge, Oloko. J after a careful review of the entire evidence found for the plaintiffs and pronounced thus:

“The sum total of the above findings is that the plaintiffs must succeed in the first leg of their claim, to wit Declaration of Title to a Statutory right of Occupancy over all that piece or parcel of land situate, lying and being at Igbo-Ori-Oke via Express Road. LL 9684 dated 22/4/85”

On the issue of trespass and perpetual injunction, the learned trial judge observed:-

“As for the general c1aim for trespass. I accept the evidence of the Plaintiffs, particularly the 4th PW that the defendants, excepting the 7th defendant, went on the land in dispute bulldozed it and destroyed both the economic crops and Oroye layout beacons………….

Plaintiffs are claiming N11,600.00 as costs of the 58 plots of the layout destroyed by the defendants. This is borne out by Exhibit L and L1. I accept their evidence. I also award N400.00 as general damages for trespass.

I am satisfied from the totality of the evidence adduced in this case that an order for perpetual injunction should be made against the defendants and/or their agents”.