EJIWUNMI JSC (Delivering the Lead Judgment): The main question that falls for determination in this appeal appears to be, whether the Court of Appeal was right in upholding the judgment of the trial court upon these set of facts and also with regards to the previous actions before the courts below, apart from that which resulted in this appeal.
The background facts of this case that led to this appeal may be putthus: the respondent was first married to the late Captain Ita Orok Okon under native law and custom in April, 1965. At the time when that marriage took place, though Captain Ita Orok was in Liverpool, England, the appellant being his sister, arranged the marriage on behalf of her brother. The respondent thereafter travelled to England to join her husband. There, the couple went through another ceremony of marriage under the English Marriage Law sometime in 1967. They thereafter lived and cohabited in London and Cardiff before returning to Nigeria in 1974. During that period, …