M. D. MUHAMMAD, J.C.A. (Delivering the Leading Judgment): The facts of the matter leading to the instant appeal are brief and not in dispute. These facts, from the pleadings and evidence supplied by parties at the trial court, Lagos State High Court, are hereunder retold.
Ademuyiwa Ashamu, now deceased, had had and held a parcel of land under Yoruba native law and custom. The land, on Ademuyiwa's death, devolved on his children: Tiamiyu, Ashimowu and Bisiriyu. The children exercised diverse acts of possession and ownership over the land that had on the death of their father, devolved on them. The letting of the land in dispute in 1973, to Tajudeen Alabi, one of the two appellants, was one of such acts. Mr Alabi, who was the defendant in suit No. LD.825/84 at the lower court, was a rent paying tenant. His case is that the land he initially held as a tenant was subsequently sold to him by Tiamiyu Ashamu in 1978. Tiamiyu was the head of the Ashamu family from 1972, at the time of sale of…