OBANDE FESTUS OGBUINYA, J.S.C. (Delivering the Leading Judgment): This appeal probes into the rightness of the decision of the Court of Appeal, Port Harcourt Division (hereunder addressed as "the lower court"), coram judice: T. N. Orji-Abadua, I. O. Akeju, and C. I. Jumbo-Ofo, JJCA, in Appeal No. CA/PH/60/2015, delivered on the 11th December, 2017. In its decision, the lower allowed in part the judgment of the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt (the trial court), in Suit No. FHC/PH/CS/4651/2006, delivered on the 8th of June, 2012, wherein I. N. Buba, J., granted the respondents’ claims in part.
The precis of the material facts of the case, which transformed into the appeal, is incompatible with complexity. The respondents alleged that on or about the 6th of August, 2006, there was an oil spillage along the appellant’s Trans Niger Pipeline (TNP) at 24" Nkpoku to Bomu Trunkline at Eneka, which destroyed the respondents' large expanse of land, farmlands, and economic trees and crops thereo…