17 May

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

16 May

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The Law of Land Pledges in Nigeria: Rights, Redemption, and Customary Rules

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

Imagine a farmer in rural Oyo State in the 1950s who needs money urgently, perhaps to pay hospital bills or fund a child's education, but has no bank account and no English law mortgage to turn to. The land his family has farmed for generations is his only asset. What does he do? He pledges it. He hands over possession to a creditor who farms it and takes the proceeds until the debt is repaid. No interest accumulates. No foreclosure threatens. And no matter how many years pass, that land remains his to reclaim the moment he produces the original...

16 May

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The Family Head as a Manager: Powers, Duties, and Fiduciary Limits in Nigeria

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

The courts have described the family head using many different words over the years. Manager. Director. Representative. Agent. Caretaker. Fiduciary. Each of those descriptions appears in decided cases.¹ But the one that best captures his legal position, and the one the Supreme Court used in Akano v. Ajuwon (1982) 11 SC 1, is manager. The manager label is important because it tells you what he is not. He is not a trustee in the English law sense, even though courts have sometimes used that word loosely. The English law trust splits ownership into two: the trustee holds the legal title and...

14 May

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Alienation of Family Land in Nigeria: Analysing Valid, Void, and Voidable Sales

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Land Law

Somewhere in Lagos right now, someone is paying money for a piece of land that another person has no legal right to sell alone. It happens every week. And when the matter eventually reaches court, the buyer discovers that the money is gone but the land is not theirs. In most of those cases, the problem is not fraud in the obvious sense. It is a failure to understand how alienation of family land actually works under Nigerian customary law. This note explains that in full, including the part that most resources leave out: who exactly counts as a "principal member,"...

12 May

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Family Property in Nigerian Customary Law: Ownership, Control, and Legal Status

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in 300 Level, Class Notes, Land Law

Every year in Nigeria, thousands of land disputes end up in court because someone sold a piece of land they had no right to sell alone. In many of those cases, the land in question is family property, and the person who sold it either did not know the law or chose to ignore it. By the time you finish reading this note, you will understand exactly why those sales fail in court, why the law is designed the way it is, and how to apply these principles to any exam question or real-world problem that comes before you. Why Customary...

10 May

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Edokpolo & Co. Ltd v. Sem-Edo Wire Industries Ltd & Ors. (1984) 7 S.C. 119; (1984) N.S.C.C. 553 — Supreme Court of Nigeria, 12 July 1984

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Case Analysis, Company Law, Landmark Judgments, Study Resources

Area of Law: Company Law — Pre-Incorporation Contracts; Ratification; Corporate Personality; CAMA Every Nigerian corporate law course places this case at the centre of its pre-incorporation contracts lecture. The principle extracted from it, that a company is not bound by contracts made on its behalf before it existed, and cannot ratify them after, is stated as settled authority in textbooks, lecture notes, and examination answers. What nobody in that tradition stops to examine is Bello JSC's concurring judgment. Bello JSC agreed with the outcome. He did not agree with how the majority got there. His position, that the case should not have...

09 May

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Yalaju-Amaye v Associated Registered Engineering Contractors Ltd [1990] 4 NWLR (Pt. 145) 422

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Case Analysis, Company Law, Landmark Judgments

Engineer Samuel Diden Yalaju-Amaye v Associated Registered Engineering Contractors Ltd & Ors (SC 198/1986) [1990] 4 NWLR (Pt. 145) 422, Supreme Court of Nigeria Area of Law: Company Law — Director Removal, Board Meeting Procedure, Minority Shareholder Protection, Foss v Harbottle A founding engineer named in his company's Articles of Association as permanent Managing Director was pushed out of his own company through a combination of shouting, a fabricated extraordinary general meeting, and forged board minutes. The Supreme Court restored him. In doing so, it confirmed that a director cannot be removed without strict compliance with the statutory procedure under the...

08 May

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Armory v. Delamirie [1722] EWHC J94; (1722) 1 Strange 505; 93 ER 664 — Court of King’s Bench, England

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Case Analysis, Landmark Judgments

Area of Law: Property — Finder's Rights; Possessory Title; Trover; Damages The defendant's name is spelled wrong, in the case report, in every textbook, and in every citation for three hundred years. The plaintiff may not have been the person who actually found the jewel. And the case that established possession as a property right enforceable against the world was decided in the name of a boy whose social position, in 1722 England, placed him at roughly the same level as the working livestock. Start with the name. The defendant was Paul de Lamerie, two words, one capital letter, no "i" in...

07 May

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Williams v. Roffey Bros. & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd. [1990] 2 WLR 1153; [1989] EWCA Civ 5 — Court of Appeal, England

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Case Analysis, Landmark Judgments

Area of Law: Contract — Consideration; Pre-Existing Duty Rule; Contract Modification The standard account of this case runs like this: a rigid nineteenth-century rule prevented parties from enforcing renegotiated contracts, the Court of Appeal modernised it by introducing "practical benefit" as valid consideration, and the doctrine of consideration was saved from its own absurdity. That account is not wrong. But it is incomplete in ways that matter, particularly for Nigerian contract law, where the case is cited as settled authority but has never been squarely applied, and where the problems buried inside the judgment have been transported wholesale into a legal...

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

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

The Law of Land Pledges in Nigeria: Rights, Redemption, and Customary Rules

The Family Head as a Manager: Powers, Duties, and Fiduciary Limits in Nigeria

Alienation of Family Land in Nigeria: Analysing Valid, Void, and Voidable Sales

Family Property in Nigerian Customary Law: Ownership, Control, and Legal Status

Edokpolo & Co. Ltd v. Sem-Edo Wire Industries Ltd & Ors. (1984) 7 S.C. 119; (1984) N.S.C.C. 553 — Supreme Court of Nigeria, 12 July 1984

Yalaju-Amaye v Associated Registered Engineering Contractors Ltd [1990] 4 NWLR (Pt. 145) 422

Armory v. Delamirie [1722] EWHC J94; (1722) 1 Strange 505; 93 ER 664 — Court of King’s Bench, England

Williams v. Roffey Bros. & Nicholls (Contractors) Ltd. [1990] 2 WLR 1153; [1989] EWCA Civ 5 — Court of Appeal, England

Remedies for Trademark Infringement in Nigeria: Injunctions, Damages and Criminal Liability

Passing Off in Nigeria: The Unregistered Mark’s Protection and the Jurisdiction Controversy

Trademark Infringement in Nigeria: How Courts Assess Confusion, Similarity and Counterfeiting

How to Register a Trademark in Nigeria: Parts A and B of the Register

POLITICAL DEFECTION AND CONSTITUTIONAL VACUUM-IN1 NIGERIA: A CRITIQUE OF THE UNEQUAL CONSEQUENCES FOR LEGISLATORS AND EXECUTIVE OFFICE HOLDERS

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