Does Long Possession of Land Prove Ownership in Nigeria?

Does Long Possession of Land Prove Ownership in Nigeria?

On Saturday, @ThatVyktur, an X user, commented on the ongoing land dispute between Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and Lori Ogebor, the wife of late Colonel Paul Ogebor.

Whether Ogebor possesses the documents of the disputed land could not be readily known but this poster claimed that she did not have documents to prove her ownership.

In response to the post, Joel Empighalo, a dispute resolution lawyer said that having possession of a land can be a way to prove ownership of a land. He cited that a 1976 Supreme Court case, Idundun v Okumagba set the principle for the decision he stated.

At press time, the post had garnered more than 2,200 likes, 694 reposts and 283,500 views.

Long possession of land can serve as a way of proving ownership in court.

In the 1976 Suit No. W/48/19686 D.O Idundun v Daniel Okumagba case, wherein Idundun was the appellant and Okumagba, the defendant.

The appellant brought a case of trespassing against the defendant and wanted an injunction of the High Court of the then Mid-Western State located in Warri to rule against the defendant that prevents them from entering or using the disputed land. However, the court determined that Idundun did not have sufficient proof to show ownership of the land.

Afterwards, the judgment was applied for an appeal in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, after reviewing all the evidence provided by both parties, rejected the traditional evidence cited in support of the plaintiff’s claim.

The Supreme Court then established five ways that ownership of land could be established.

Firstly, the apex court established that ownership of land may be proved by traditional evidence. It also ruled that “ownership of land may be proved by production of documents of title which must, of course, be duly authenticated in the sense that their due execution must be proved unless they are produced from proper custody in circumstances giving rise to the presumption in favour of due execution in the case of documents twenty years old or more at the date of the contract”.

Furthermore, the court ruled that “acts of the person (or persons) claiming the land such as selling, leasing or renting out all or part of the land, or farming on it or on a portion of it, are also evidence of owner­ship, provided the acts extend over a sufficient length of time and are numerous and positive enough as to warrant the inference that the person is the true owner”.

In addition, and of most importance to the claim in question, is that acts of long possession and enjoy­ment of the land may also be prima facie evidence of ownership of the particular piece or quantity of land with reference to which such acts are done. However, it goes on to rule that while long possession of the disputed land can serve as evidence, it cannot take precedence when another person proves ownership with a good title as evidence.

FIJ also spoke to a lawyer to get further insight to this principle of the Supreme Court.

The lawyer, who did not want to be named due to the nature of the ongoing FCT disputes, stated that having a property presumes that the possessor is 90 per cent the owner of that property.

The lawyer described the Idundun v Okumagba case as a locus classicus, an authoritative reference when it comes to land disputes in Nigeria.

He, however, specified that the long possession must have been undisturbed; the possessor using the land must have been undisturbed by another party.

The claim that long possession of land can be a tenable proof of ownership in court is true as a laid down principle in the Idundun v Okumagba 1976 land dispute case established it.