Barrister Magaji Henry Danjuma V. S.c.c. Nigeria Limited & Ors (2016)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report – COURT OF APPEAL

AMINA AUDI WAMBAI, J.C.A. (Delivering the Leading Judgment)

This appeal is from the decision of the Kaduna State High Court sitting at Kafanchan delivered on 20/04/2009 in suit No. KDH/KAF/54/2006 by Hon. Justice Luka D. Aba wherein the learned trial Judge though declared title in favour of the Appellant, declined to grant the Appellant’s reliefs of damages for trespass, order directing 1st Respondent to vacate the land and other injunctive reliefs.

The Appellant as the Plaintiff before the lower Court claimed against the Respondents as Defendants jointly and severally as follows:-

?1. A DECLARATION, that the Plaintiff is the legal and rightful owner of all that parcel of land measuring 98.5 hectares located near Sabon Iche village in Kagarko Local Government of Kaduna State and covered by Certificate of Occupancy No.14885.

2. A DECLARATION that the Defendant particularly the 1st Defendant’s entry into the Plaintiffs land and erecting illegal structures thereon is illegal and amount to trespass.

?3. AN ORDER that the 1st Defendant should immediately remove the camp it has illegally constructed on the

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Plaintiffs? land, refill all beacons destroyed/removed on part of the Plaintiff?s land.

4. AN ORDER that the Defendants should pay to the Plaintiff the sum of N10,000,000.00 (Ten million Naira only) being general damages for trespassing into the Plaintiff?s land.
5. AN ORDER OF PERPETUAL INJUNCTION restraining the Defendants, agents, workmen, privies and assigns from further trespassing or erecting illegal structures on the Plaintiffs land.”

The learned trial Judge granted the Appellant’s 1st relief but declined all the other reliefs.

It is against the refusal of the learned trial Judge to grant the Appellant’s reliefs of damages for trespass, an order directing the 1st Defendant to vacate the land in dispute and other injunctive reliefs that the Appellant has appealed to this Court.

?The facts of the case are that upon the grant of the Appellant’s application by the Kaduna State Government for de-reservation of a portion of the Giwa Forest Reserve the Appellant became the holder of a Certificate of Occupancy No. 14995 covering an area measuring 98.5 hectares of land situate near Sabon Iche village in Kagarko Local

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Government Area, which was granted to him by the Kaduna State Government, the possession of which the Appellant took by planting economic trees and farming arable crops thereon. Meanwhile, pursuant to the Gurara Lower Usman Dan, FCT Abuja water transfer pipeline contract between the 1st & 2nd Respondents entered into on 18/01/2001, the 1st Respondent who was contracted to execute the project was given occupation of part of the Giwa Forest Reserve by the 2nd and 3rd Respondents in 2001. The 1st Respondent immediately mobilized to site in the same year, 2001, and was later confronted by the Appellant that the land upon which the 1st Respondent erected its camp, other structures and dug barrow pits which destroyed some of the Appellant’s beacons, was not on the Respondents land but on the Appellant’s land. Appellant protested the encroachment officially to both the 1st and 2nd Respondent and asked for compensation but to no avail, hence the institution of the suit at the lower Court.

?At the trial, the Appellant as the sole witness testified for himself in proof of his case as PW1 and tendered Exhibits A – H. The Respondents called four (4) witnesses and

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