DIKE & ORS
V.
NWOKE & ORS

ABOYI JOHN IKONGBEH, J.C.A. (Delivering the Leading Judgment): This is an appeal by the plaintiffs, representing two families. They had sued the defendants in the Imo High Court, sitting at Oguta, claiming a declaration of title to land, damages for trespass and injunction. Their case was the land in dispute had been deforested by the ancestor of the two families. After the deforestation the founders started exercising full acts of ownership and possession, like farming thereon and letting parts of it to rent-paying tenants. One of their tenants was the Imo State Agricultural Development Authority (or Corporation), i.e. A.D.A or A.D.C. This particular tenant did not keep to the terms of the grant to it, so the plaintiffs threw it out. It was soon after this that sometimes in 1984 the 1st defendant trespassed into the land. The 2nd plaintiff testified as Pw1. The plaintiff called four other witnesses.

The defendants' case was that the land in dispute was communal land. It had been defo…