Akwa Ibom Court reaffirms Woman inheritance rights

The High Court of Akwa Ibom State in Uyo has ruled that women are entitled to inherit their father’s property.

The court also ruled in favor of the nieces, awarding them N20 million, against Mr. Sampson Silas Udoh, who had denied his late brother’s daughters access to their inheritance.

Udoh, a native of Itiam Etoi in the Uyo Local Government Area, was fined N20 million by the sitting court, Justice Ntong Ntong, for violating the rights of his two nieces by preventing them from receiving their late father’s property.

On August 16, 2022, Mr. Williams Ubetem filed a lawsuit against Mrs. Bakabasi Victor James and Miss. Ndantiabasi Isaac Silas, as well as the State Police Commissioner of Akwa Ibom and the IPO attached to the State Police Headquarters in Ikot Akpan Abia.

The applicant’s behavior was deemed “obnoxious and repugnant to natural justice, equity, and good conscience” by Justice Ntong, who also stated that “the maltreatment is opprobrium, offensive, and unconstitutional.”

The applicant’s primary argument is that his late brother’s daughters should not receive their father’s property because of their gender.

According to the responses, “from birth until date, without any problem until they attempted to appropriate the inheritance and their uncle unleashed mayhem,” their father built his own house on his own land between 1976 and 1980.

The judge stated that the paramount rulers, clan heads, village heads, and community leaders of Akwa Ibom State needed to accept the truth that “female children have an equal stake with their male counterparts to inherit their parents’ properties.”

We cannot allow the applicant to take advantage of his nieces’ innocence simply because they are girls and women by birth.

It is clear that the police and other respondents did not and would not violate the applicant’s rights based on the facts presented to the court. Instead, it was the applicant who flagrantly violated his nieces’ constitutional rights, and this cannot be tolerated.

The court stated, “The application for the enforcement of the applicant’s fundamental rights has failed woefully in its entirety and is dismissed with a total sum of twenty million, one hundred thousand naira payable to the 1st and 2nd respondents at ten million, fifty thousand naira each.”