ANIN J.A.
For about eight years the plaintiff, a Takoradi butcher, bought cows on credit from one Ibrahim Faleke, who was the agent in Ghana of the first defendant, a cattle dealer domiciled in Nigeria. By 1958, the plaintiff had accumulated a sizeable debt on the cattle transaction; and the parties were disputing about the exact size of his debt, and the mode of its payment. Eventually, they agreed on a transaction designed to wipe off the plaintiff’s indebtedness. This present litigation is all about the true nature of the transaction mutually agreed upon in 1958 by the parties.
The plaintiff’s case in the court below was that by 1958 his debit balance on the cattle transaction amounted to ¢2,600; and that he verbally agreed with Ibrahim Faleke, firstly, to pledge his house (then numbered 37/3, Effia Kuma but now renumbered 66/3) to the first defendant as a security for his outstanding cattle debt; and secondly to permit the defendants to collect accruing monthly rent of ¢50 or ¢600 …