Lewey ,J.A. In this case the appellant was the plaintiff in a suit against His Excellency the Governor of Nigeria in which the plaintiff unsuccessfully claimed as against the defendant:- (a) a declaration that the plaintiff's removal by the defendant from his office as a member of the Ijebu Remo Native Authority was unlawful, unconstitutional and ultra vires; and (b) an injunction restraining the defendant, his agents and servants, from interfering with the plaintiff in the exercise of his rights as a member of such Native Authority.
The issues between the parties are clearly set out in the pleadings. The plaintiff in his Statement of Claim averred that the defendant had no power in law to remove the plaintiff from the Native Authority. The defendant by his defence relied on section 11of the Native Authority Ordinance and on the power vested in him by the provisions of that section.
It may be convenient at this point to refer to certain matters which are common ground; namely, that the Governor had duly appointed the Resident as his delegate for the purpose of exercising the powers given by section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance; that the Ijebu Remo Native Authority had been lawfully constituted of the Akarigbo together with the Ijebu Remo Native Council, and that it belonged, therefore, to that class of Native Authority which is described in section 5 of the Native Authority Ordinance as a “Chief associated with a Council”; and that it was by virtue of section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance that the Governor’s delegate had purported to remove the appellant from the Native Authority.
When the case came on for hearing before Gregg, J., in March of this year, a preliminary point was taken on behalf of the defendant that the Court had no jurisdiction in the matter by reason of the absolute and unfettered discretion vested in the defendant by section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance. Against that submission, the plaintiff was called to give evidence. That evidence was ;directed to show that the provisions of section 11 could not properly be applied to him, since his status on the Ijebu Remo Council and therefore on the Ijebu Remo Native Authority was that of an ex-officio member-a class of member as to which the section contained no specific reference. In the course .of his evidence, the plaintiff put in four exhibits.
Exhibit “A” was a letter of the 11th September, 1943, from the Resident, Ijebu Province, purporting to notify the plaintiff of his appointment as an “ ex-officio member” of the Ijebu Remo Native Authority: Exhibits “ B” and “C” were copies of the Standing Rules of that Native Authority for the years 1943 and 1947 respectively: Exhibit “D” was another letter from the Resident dated the 4th March, 1948, informing the plaintiff of a direction for his removal from the Native Authority.
After hearing the arguments of Counsel on the evidence given by the plaintiff, and on the effect of those exhibits, Gregg, J., gave his decision on the 8th March, when he held that he had no power to entertain an action which sought, in effect, to have set aside a lawful direction under section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance. The learned Judge accordingly dismissed the plaintiff's claim. It is against that decision that the plaintiff, the present appellant, has appealed to this Court.
In his decision, which appears at page 24 of the record, the learned Judge made a careful and detailed examination of the contentions of the appellant. Those contentions were that by virtue of his office as Odemo of Ishara the appellant was an ex-officio member of the Ijebu Remo Council; that since that Council as such, was part of the Ijebu Remo Native Authority, his status on the Native Authority was also that of ex-officio member; and that the provisions of section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance could not therefore be applied to him, as there was no reference to any such class as “ ex-officio members” in the section, which dealt only with those who were members-to quote the exact words of the section-“ either personally or in a representative capacity”.
Those contentions were rejected by the trial Judge. He found that there was no statutory provision for a distinct class of ex-officio members, as such, in relation to a Native Authority, that is to say, either in Public Notice 10 of 1947, which constituted the Ijebu Remo Native Authority, or indeed, anywhere in the Native Authority Ordinance. For that reason the Judge further found that the Resident was acting ultra vires when he stated in the letter, Exhibit “A” that the appellant was” now ex-officio a member” of the Native Authority, that such a statement could, in consequence, have no legal effect or significance, and that the copies of the Standing Rules (Exhibits “B” and “ C “) were similarly ultra vires as respects their references to “ ex-officio members” (and it was, of course, in respect to those references that they had been put in as part of the appellant's case). Finally, the Judge found that Exhibit “D” , containing the direction for the removal of the appellant from the Native Authority, was lawful and effective for its purpose, by which the Judge must be taken to have meant that the provisions of section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance were applicable, and had been properly applied, to the appellant.
On the appellant’s evidence, together with his exhibits, and on the arguments of Counsel-and having regard to the nature of the discretion vested in the respondent by section 11 of the Ordinance-the learned Judge was, in my opinion, entirely justified in coming to those conclusions, and I see no reason to dissent from any of them. But the arguments addressed to this Court were directed in such detail to the provisions of the Standing Rules of the Native Authority, and to the true interpretation of section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance, that it becomes desirable to carry the consideration of those matters somewhat farther than was necessary on the submissions made to the trial Judge.
As regards the Standing Rules, the appellant applied for, and obtained, the leave of this Court to adduce new and additional evidence so as to enable him to produce an official printed copy of the Standing Rules in place of the type-written copies which were all that was available to him at the trial. But a consideration of the official Standing Rules so produced, and of the arguments addressed to us in respect to them, supports the findings of the trial Judge that .parts of the Rules, at any rate, were ultra vires. Not only do the Rules make unauthorised provision for a specific class of “ex-officio member” on the Native Authority as to which the parent Ordinance is silent, but they also define, establish, and provide for, a body described in the Rules as the “Native Authority Council “for which I have been unable to find any legislative sanction.
In my opinion, the Standing Rules are as useless to the appellant in his endeavour to establish an express Statutory “ex-officio” status on the Native Authority as Exhibit “ A” has been found to be.
There remains the question of the construction to be placed on section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance, more particularly in regard to the words “personally or in a representative capacity”, which occur therein, and to which Counsel for both parties addressed this Court at length. I may here observe that the construction of section 11 is not free from difficulty the section is loosely drafted and somewhat disconnected, apart from its use of the term representative capacity” which is neither defined in the Ordinance nor used in any other of its sections.
It was again argued on behalf of the appellant that, once it was accepted that he sat on. and had been appointed to, the Native Authority strictly in the capacity of an “ex-officio” member, he could not be removed by virtue of section 11 of the Ordinance since that section contained no reference whatever to “ex-officio” members as a class and, therefore, could not be said to extend to them. It is true that the section is silent as to any such class; indeed, so far as I have been able to discover, there is no mention of any such class of member anywhere in the Native Authority Ordinance, nor, incidentally, of the “ Elected Members for whom the Standing Rules also purport to provide. For the reasons already set out, the learned Judge quite rightly, in my opinion, found that the appellant was not an “ex-officio member” of the Authority in the strict sense which the appellant sought, as part of his case, to establish. Does it then follow from that conclusion that the appellant comes within the scope of the provisions of section 11 of the Ordinance? In my view, it is clear that he does. The respondent’s contention as to that, before this Court, was that the words in the section “in a representative capacity” are sufficiently wide to include the appellant in his office of Odemo of Ishara since those words-in the absence of any restrictive definition in the Ordinance-must be held to be applicable to all members who sit on the Native Authority either as Chiefs or as Elected Members. They apply; in other words, to all who are members of an Authority by reason of their belonging-in a capacity other than a personal capacity-to a council or group which is, or forms part of, the Authority, and they must, it seems to extend to a Chief, who must be taken to represent his people, or some section of them. In this connection, it is not without interest to refer to rule 26 of the Standing Rules. Perhaps I should add that the words clearly do not, however, include a Chief who himself constitutes an Authority nor a Chief who, in association with a Council, is appointed to be an Authority. For my part, therefore, I accept the contentions so advanced on behalf of the respondent, and it follows that, in my judgment, there can be no substance in the appellant's case or in the arguments addressed to this court in support of it.
For the reasons which I have set out, I am of opinion that the decision of Gregg, J., on the appellant's claim should be upheld, and that this appeal should be dismissed with costs against the appellant assessed at £10 10s. 0d.
Blackall, P. I agree with the judgment that has just been read by my brother Lewey and have only a few remarks to add about the construction of the words personally or in a representative capacity” in section 11 of the Native Authority Ordinance.
The meaning of particular words in an Act of Parliament, to use the words of Abbott, C.J., in Rex v. Hall (1) ,. is to be found not so much in a strict etymological propriety of language, not even in the popular sense, as in the subject or occasion on which they are used”. Thus the plainest words may be controlled by reference to the context for, as that eminent Judge, Blackburn, J., observed:-
It is, I apprehend, in accordance with the general rule of construction in every case, that you are not only to look at the words, but you are to look at the context, the collocation, and the object of such words relating to such a matter, and interpret the meaning according to what would appear to be the meaning intended to be conveyed by the use of the words under such circumstances; “ Rein v. Lane (2).
In my view, the interpretation placed upon the words “personally or in a representative capacity” by my brother Lewey accords with this well-established canon of construction, and gives effect to the true intention of the legislature.
Verity, C.J. I concur and have nothing to add.
Appeal dismissed.