KOGI State Town, Planning and Development Board and the state’s Ministry of Agriculture, defendants in a civil land mater, have been told by the High Court of Justice of the State that revocation of land cannot be done through mere radio announcement without recourse to the owner of the land.
This declaratory judgement was given by Hon. Justice Nasiru Ajanah, Chief Judge of the state who presides over the state’s High Court 1 sitting in Lokoja, the state capital.
The matter with suit number HCL/76/2013 was instituted in 2013 by one Olorunfemi R. Mohammed against the two agencies and the Attorney-General of the state who was the third defendant.
The Chief Judge expressly resolved two of the issues to be determined in favour of the claimant. He refused to accept the claim by the defendants that the claimant got information of the revocation of the plot through a radio announcement, a process the court declared unacceptable to the provisions of the Land Use Act.
He said. “The defendants relied on exhibit D8 said to have been issued in August, 2013. The said exhibit which is headed “Announcement” and not addressed to any person or authority is supposed to be a notice informing the General Public of the revocation of the Customary and Statutory Rights of Occupancy over land situated around the premises of ADP and Mechanical Workshop previously zoned for abattoir along Felele-Okene New Market Road. It was signed for the Hon Commissioner, Ministry of Land and Urban Development. The above constitutes the act of accusation of the land including the two plots of land that are in issue in this case.
“The notice of revocation shown in Exhibit 8 was not addressed to any person in particular. I take judicial notice of the fact that there had been previous correspondence between the Land Office and the Claimant leading to the issuance of an approval of Statutory Right of Occupancy to the Claimant. The identity of the Claimant was therefore well-known and the defendants or the Land Office did not convey notice of the said revocation to the Claimant as required under Section 44 of the Land Use Act. I am therefore unable to accept that there was any revocation or acquisition of the Claimant’s land by the defendants in this case…..I therefore hold in answer to the issue 2 that the defendants did not validly revoke the Claimant’s title or properly acquire the plots of land in dispute.”
On the ownership of the plots in contention, Justice Ajanah firstly noted, with reference to an earlier decision of the Supreme Court, that the production of document of title is one of the methods by which a Claimant can prove his title to any piece of land. “The documents produced in this case by the Claimant prove that he has title to the land.”
In authenticating the ownership in favour of Muhammed, the judge who had visited the location of the plots of land during the process of the hearing said everything points to the fact that the land belonged to the claimant.
“I have also gone to the locus and from the explanation and physical structure of the development on the land; I have no doubt that the Claimant was in physical occupation or possession of the said land. I therefore have no hesitation in resolving the first issue in favour of the Claimant i.e. that he has title to the land in dispute.”
However, Justice Ajanah refused to grant the claimant’s request for a perpetual injunction to restrain Kogi State government agencies from interfering with the land in the future stating that the provisions of the Land Use Act did not empower the court to grant such an order.
He said in the concluding part of the judgement while partially granting the order: “I find myself unable to make such a blanket order. I say this because of the provision of the Land Use Act that vests ownership of land on the Governor of the State and also vest him with right to acquire land for the public purposes. In the circumstance, the only order of injunction I can make in the circumstance of this case is to issue an injunction restraining the Defendants, their privies, servants or agents from unlawfully entering into the land adjudged for the complainant and I so order.”
A brief background of the case indicates that sometime, between 2009 and 2011, the Claimant, Olorunfemi R. Mohammed, acquired two parcels of land adjacent to each other from two previous owners. The plots are located at Felele at a place directly opposite the NNPC Mega Station and in front of a fenced premises belonging to the Agricultural Development Project (ADP).
He tendered various documents and presented two witnesses who gave evidence of his ownership of the land. Their testimony were supported with documents which included two Site Plans, Deeds of Assignment in respect of the two Plots, original allocation papers and approvals for a grant of statutory Right of Occupancy dated 18/2/2011 and 23/9/2011 for the two plots respectively.
He said the Defendants however trespassed into the land by dumping metal objects on it and even placed a removal notice on his perimeter fence in May, 2013. He further stated that he approached the Court for a resolution when the state’s Ministry of Agriculture started claiming ownership of the land.
