Chief Okirinta Ugbala & Ors V. Awo Okorie & Ors (1975)

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FATAYI-WILLIAMS, J.S.C. 

In Suit No. HOW/73/71 commenced in the High Court of the East Central State sitting at Owerri, the plaintiffs, now appellants, claimed against the defendants, now respondents, jointly, severally, and in alternative, declaration of title to a piece of land called “Okwunta” which is situated at Ocham Na Dibia, Okporo, within the Owerri Judicial Division. They also asked for an injunction restraining the defendants, their servants and agents from further acts of trespass in the said land.

Pleadings were ordered and were duly delivered. At the hearing, the plaintiffs called fourteen witnesses to testify in support of the averments in their pleadings while the defendants called five witnesses. One of the witnesses called by the plaintiffs is Chief Okirinta Ugbala, the first plaintiff. He gave evidence as the fourteenth plaintiff’s witness and testified that the land in dispute is owned by his family.

He said the land is not in Okwunta land and that they never claimed that Okwunta land is on their own land. Under cross-examination, he admitted that he was one of the plaintiffs in a case which they brought against the defendants in the Magistrate’s Court and that he gave evidence in that case about three and a half years before the date of the present proceedings. He was cross-examined at length about what he said in his evidence in that case. Because of the complaint of the plaintiff in the appeal now before us about the use which the learned trial Judge made of his answers to these questions, we think it is desirable to reproduce the question and answers. They are as follows:

“PUT: The place you now call Okwunta was referred to by you as Okwu Okporo when you said before the magistrate that the St. Paul’s School, Agwusi Juju and Nnajiuba’s compound are in Okwu Okporo land for which the defendants do not pay rent.

ANS:  If I said so it will only mean that I did not advert my mind to the point. I did not say so. Okwu is farmland and not the ancestral settlement.

PUT:  Did you not tell the magistrate that Okwu means ancestral home and also as follows:-

‘There is Okwu Okporo, Okwu Ududu. These villages in their ancestral homes. The Okwu Okporo people live on the land in dispute’

ANS:  I cannot recollect if, I did so. The ruins of the houses of defendants’ ancestors can be found on the land today. There is Nkoro when one goes from the land in  dispute to our village. It is not the boundary between us and Okwu Okporo.

PUT: You told the magistrate that the Nkoro formed the boundary between you and the defendants

ANS: The Nkoro I meant in my evidence is the one between us and Ududu people and did not refer to any Nkoro as boundary between us and the defendants.”

The notes of the learned trial Judge after this cross-examination reads:-

“Evidence of the witness before the magistrate now sought to be tendered but only in regard to the points contradicting him now. No objection, tendered admitted and marked Exhibit D.” (The underlining is ours.)
After reviewing in detail the evidence adduced by both parties, the learned trial Judge observed as follows:-

“It is clear that the plaintiffs’ evidence of traditional history in its character and substance seems to beg the issue and carried little or no weight. There is nothing in the traditional history to show how the plaintiffs came to own the land in dispute, whether they acquired it as original settlers or founders, or by conquest or grant or purchase. The ownership was related to how they granted portions of the land in dispute or the whole of it to the defendants’ forbears. This is not traditional history of their title to the land and I will treat it as non-existent in this case and the plaintiffs will be left with the evidence of user.”