OBANDE FESTUS OGBUINYA, JSC (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. Jombo-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 June, 2012, wherein I. N. Buba, J. granted the respondents' claims in part.
The précis of the material facts of the case, which transformed into the appeal, are incompatible with complexity. The respondents alleged that on or about the 6th 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, farm lands and economic trees and crops thereon. The resp…