Brothers To Pay 3 Sisters N72m For Denying Them Share in Father’s Property

The Rivers State High Court has delivered Judgment in a Suit instituted by four sisters against their brothers for excluding them in the sharing of their late father’s property.
The four sisters, Chinyere Abel, Perpetual Abel, Bethel Abel and Josephine Abel have dragged their three brothers to court for discriminating against them in the inheritance of their father’s estate.
The claimants asked the court to interpret some sections of the 1999 constitution as amended and the Rivers State Prohibition of the Curtailment of Women’s Right to share in Family Property Law No.2 of 2022.
In a Judgment delivered on Wednesday, Hon. Justice Augusta Kingsley Chukwu, directed the defendants to pay the four women a total sum of N72million as damages and also render public apology in a national newspaper and two local tabloids.
The tradition and custom relied upon by the defendants were said to be discriminatory and in conflict with the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Section 42(1) (a) and (2).
This Judgment has voided the age-long tradition and customary law which forbade a female child from inheriting her father’s estate; a practice which is described as anachronistic, primitive and unconscionable and not fit to exist in the 21st-century.
The law relied on is the Rivers State Prohibition of the Curtailment of Women’s Right to Share in Family Property Law No. 2 of 2022.