Prof. Theophilus Adelodun Okin & Anor V. Mrs. Agnes Iyeba Okin (2016)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report – COURT OF APPEAL

UCHECHUKWU ONYEMENAM, J.C.A. (Delivering the Leading Judgment)

This appeal is against the judgment of the Federal High Court, Ilorin Division, presided over by Honourable Justice A. O. Faji delivered on the 24th day of February, 2015. In the said Judgment, the learned trial Judge granted all but one of the reliefs claimed by the Respondent herein.

The said judgment is the subject of the four grounds of appeal filed by the Appellants herein.

The Appellants’ case is that at all material time before the institution of the case at the trial Court, the 1st Appellant was the husband of the Respondent who was in the service of running the two educational institutions to wit: Kinsey Academy and Kinsey College of Education for the 1st Appellant. The administration of the Educational institutions under the head of the Respondent was at a time challenged on financial obsession of the Respondent which accounted for her disengagement by the 1st Appellant from the service of the two Educational institutions.

The Respondent challenged her disengagement from the service of the institutions on the ground that, the schools were ran under a partnershipEducation

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arrangement with the 1st Appellant. She therefore called for a dissolution of the partnership, winding down the affairs of the two Educational institutions, the liquidation of the assets and liabilities of the schools and ultimate sharing of the liquidated assets equally between her and the 1st Appellant.

The Respondent’s case is that, she was a staff of the Uthman Dan Fodio University Sokoto when she met 1st Appellant and they got married in December, 1994. After their marriage in 1994, the Respondent retired from the service of Uthman Dan Fodio University and relocated to Ilorin to co-found the Kinsey Academy with the 1st Appellant between 1997 – 1999 when the school took off.

?The Respondent invested all her retirement benefits and savings in the establishment of Kinsey Academy as well as transferring the furniture of her former private school in Sokoto for the take off of Kinsey Academy. On his part, the 1st Appellant donated his building consisting of a block of two flats located on eight-plots of land. The academy made progress and more properties were acquired from the neighbourhood for expansion. Both 1st Appellant and Respondent were

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joint signatories to the school account. Between 2008 and 2012 the Respondent and 1st Appellant applied for and got approval to establish Kinsey College of Education which took off in 2012. On 12th May, 2003, the Kinsey Academy was registered as a partnership business under the Companies and Allied Matters Decree (1990) with the Respondent and 1st Appellant as partners.

?The running of the schools was carried out by the Respondent while the 1st Appellant took charge of infrastructural and physical development of the schools. Things went on well until sometimes in 2012 when the 1st Appellant unilaterally decided to cede the school’s premises and structures for use to establish Grace Ownes University owned by Dr. Isaac A. Okin, a junior brother of the 1st Appellant based in, USA, to which the Respondent vehemently opposed and resisted. The disagreement between the 1st Appellant and the Respondent over the establishment of Grace Owens University on Kinsey school’s premises not only led to the purported dismissal of the Respondent from the Kinsey schools allegedly as Registrar, but also to the collapse of the marriage between the 1st Appellant and the

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Respondent. The Respondent subsequently challenged her purported dismissal and banishment from the Kinsey Academy and Kinsey College of Education, Ilorin before the Ilorin Division of the Federal High Court. That Court’s judgment in favour of the Respondent is the subject of this appeal filed by the Appellants.