STEPHEN NWAKIRE V. THE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE

M. E. OGUNDARE, JSC (Delivering the Leading Judgment): The issue that calls for determination in this appeal is as to whether, on the facts of this case, the defence of bona fide claim of right under section 23 of the Criminal Code Laws of Eastern Nigeria, 1963 (applicable in Anambra State at the time of the trial of this case) was available to the appellant herein.

The appellant was charged in the Magistrate's Court of the former Anambra State of Nigeria in the Nnewi Magisterial District on two counts of unlawfully conducting himself in a manner likely to cause a breach of the peace and willfully and unlawfully damaging four electric poles and four fluorescent lights property of one Albert Anochili. The evidence led at the trial disclosed that there had been a dispute between Albert Anochili and the appellant over a piece of land on which Albert erected a building resulting in the appellant instituting an action in the High Court at Nnewi over the said land in 1979. Subsequent to th…