Facts:

The Respondent was substituted for the deceased Respondents, who were the Plaintiffs at the High Court of Lagos (trial Court), wherein they made a case that their predecessor in title and father, late L. B. Agusto, as lessor, entered into a lease agreement with Appellant’s late husband over four plots of land at Isolo, Lagos. The leasehold was for a period of ninety-nine years at an annual rent of 5 pounds for the first twenty years subject to revision every twenty years. During the lifetime of the two signatories to the lease, the Appellant’s deceased husband failed to pay rent on the property to the late Chief Imam Agusto. The late Chief Imam Agusto died on 26th July 1971 whereof the Appellant’s husband still failed to pay rent to the Respondent as administratrixes inspite of repeated demands until he also died in 1986. Before his death, the Appellant’s husband had erected a building on two out of the four plots and fenced the land. The Appellant, upon the death of her husband, continued in possession of the land. The Appellant too refused to pay rent in respect of the four plots of land inspite of repeated demands following which refusal the Respondents served her with notice of forfeiture of the lease dated 28th December 1992. It was the Appellant’s refusal to give up possession that led to the commencement of the action at the trial court wherein certain claims were made against the Appellant.

The Appellant’s case, on the other hand, is that her late husband paid up the rent due on the term of the lease by the time of his death in 1986. That she has been in occupation of the house erected on the land before and after the demise of her husband and the first time she saw the Respondent was when they came to her husband’s house with thugs and soldiers.

At the close of the hearing, the learned trial Judge granted some of the Respondent’s reliefs.

Dissatisfied, the Appellants appealed to the Court of Appeal (lower court). The appeal was accordingly dismissed.

Further aggrieved, the Appellant appealed to the Supreme Court.