26 May

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Relevancy, Admissibility and Weight of Evidence Under the Evidence Act 2011

There is a scene that plays out in Nigerian courts more often than most students realise. A counsel tenders a document. The opposing counsel objects. The judge says: "Counsel, is your objection to relevance or to admissibility?" The counsel who cannot tell the difference has already lost the argument, because these are not the same question, they carry different consequences, and the court will treat them entirely differently. These three concepts, relevancy, admissibility, and weight, are the structural backbone of the Nigerian law of evidence. Every other rule in the Evidence Act 2011 is, in some sense, an elaboration of how...

26 May

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Facts in Issue and Relevant Facts: The Gateway to Evidence in Nigerian Courts

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Evidence Law

Picture a land dispute in the Ibadan High Court. The plaintiff says the defendant trespassed on his farmland. The defendant says the land belongs to him and he was simply exercising his right. The plaintiff's counsel calls a witness who wants to testify that the defendant has a bad temper and once quarrelled with a neighbour. The defence objects. The judge sustains the objection. Why? Because the defendant's temper is not a fact in issue and is not relevant to any fact in issue in that case. It does not make the question of who owns the land any more or...

26 May

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Sources of Nigerian Law of Evidence: From the 1943 Ordinance to the Evidence Act 2011

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Evidence Law

In 1952, a man stood trial in a Nigerian High Court and his counsel tried to argue that certain evidence should be admitted based on an English common law rule that existed before the Evidence Ordinance came into force. The court had to decide: does that old English rule still operate in Nigeria, or has it been replaced by the statute? The answer depended entirely on understanding where Nigerian evidence law comes from and how the different sources rank against each other. That question has not gone away. In fact, it became more complicated when the Evidence Act 2011 replaced the...

26 May

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What is the Law of Evidence in Nigeria? Meaning, Scope and Classification

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Evidence Law

Imagine you are sitting in the gallery of the Oyo State High Court watching a murder trial. The prosecution counsel stands up and says the accused was seen leaving the scene of the crime. The defence counsel jumps up and objects. The judge asks: what is the basis for that objection? What follows is not an argument about whether the accused actually killed anyone. It is an argument about whether the way that fact is being proved is legally acceptable. That argument, the debate about how facts are established in court, is exactly what the law of evidence is about. Every...

21 May

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The Nigerian Land Tenure System: Customary Law and Landholding Principles

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Exam Preparation, Land Law, Study Resources

Land is not simply property in Nigeria. It is identity, history, and inheritance compressed into soil. A family's land tells the story of where they came from, who they are, and what they owe to those who came before and those yet to be born. That understanding shapes everything about how Nigerians have historically related to land, and it explains why no attempt to impose a single, uniform system of land law has ever fully succeeded. Nigeria's land tenure system today is the product of three legal traditions operating simultaneously and imperfectly alongside each other: indigenous customary law, colonial statutory interventions...

21 May

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Individual Ownership of Land Under Nigerian Customary Law

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

There is a quiet paradox sitting at the heart of Nigerian customary land law, one that most textbooks walk past without stopping to notice. The entire framework of family property rests on the concept of a founder: a person who originally owned land individually, who settled on it, built on it, and controlled it as their own, and whose death transformed that personal ownership into collective family property. If the founder's individual ownership is the seed from which family ownership grows, then individual ownership is not a late English importation at all. It was there first. This paradox goes to the...

21 May

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Kola Tenancy and Land Borrowing: A Critical Analysis of Customary Land Grants

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

Imagine being handed land on which to build your house, raise your children, and plant your farm. You pay a token amount, maybe the equivalent of a few kolanuts and drinks, and you are let into possession. You build. You farm. Decades pass. Your children take over. They too build. At some point, someone from the original landowner's family shows up and asks for a fresh kola payment to acknowledge their title. If you refuse, the tenancy is at risk. If you agree, you have just confirmed, again, that you are not the owner of the land you have occupied...

20 May

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Allotment and Use: The Legal Rights of Members in Nigerian Family Property

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

Picture a man who spends thirty years building his life on a piece of land. He clears it, plants crops, constructs a two-storey house with money he earned, watches his children grow up inside its walls. Then he dies. His widow soon discovers that the land was never truly his to give. The family head shows up. Other relatives make their position known. And neither the thirty years of effort, nor the building that still stands, nor the memories baked into the foundation, can alter the legal outcome. This is not a story of injustice or corruption, though it may feel...

17 May

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Partition and Sale: How Family Property is Determined Under Nigerian Law

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

Every piece of family land that exists today will eventually stop being family land. That is not a prediction. It is a legal certainty. Family property does not last forever. The law provides specific ways in which it comes to an end, and when it does, the consequences for every member of the family are immediate and permanent. Understanding those consequences is essential for examination answers and for anyone advising a family caught in a dispute about whether their land is still family property or whether it has already been determined. What "Determination" Means in This Context Determination simply means the ending...

17 May

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Land Succession Law in Nigeria: Navigating Intestate and Testate Inheritance Rules

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Land Law, Legal News

When a Nigerian landowner dies, the question of who gets the land is rarely simple. The answer depends on at least four things: whether the deceased made a will, what type of marriage he contracted, which customary law governed his personal affairs, and where exactly the land is situated. Get any one of those factors wrong and the entire analysis changes. This is why succession to land rights in Nigeria produces more litigation than almost any other area of property law. This note walks through the rules clearly, covering intestate succession under customary law across the major ethnic groups, testate succession...

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