COURT GRANTS BIANCA OJUKWU'S APPLICATION TO RE-OPEN EVIDENCE IN LATE OJUKWU'S ESTATE.

 

 

 

Bianca Ojukwu‘s application to re-open evidence in a suit she filed against her late husband – Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu’s family was granted by Justice Abdulfattah Lawal of a Lagos High Court, in Igbosere on Tuesday, April 26th 2016.

 

According to the Vanguard, the former beauty queen instituted a lawsuit on behalf of her under-aged children Afamefuna and Nwachukwu against Ojukwu Transport Limited (OTL) and seven others. An attempt had earlier been made to eject her sons from the company’s properties located in Lagos.

 

She prayed the court to declare the threat of forceful ejection by the defendants as illegal and that her children are entitled to possess some properties owned by the late Ojukwu.

 

The claimants stated that throughout the period their father was struggling to retrieve the properties from the government, the second to seventh defendants “never played any role in the struggle nor contributed financially or otherwise to the realisation of the struggle.”

 

The matter was however adjourned till June 3, when she will give evidence on behalf of her sons.

 

 

QUICK FLASH BACK TO 2012.

 

As we recall, The Will of the late Biafran leader,  Chukwuemeka Odimegwu-Ojukwu, followed a number of  counter claims. Bianca's inheritance stated in the will is to replace her late husband as the trustee in the family company, Ojukwu Transport Company Ltd. 

 

However, a director of the company, Ifeukwu Ojukwu, has said Bianca has no place on the directorship or trusteeship of the company. He told Punch that since the company was owned by the late Sir Louis Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the late Biafran warlord could not dictate who the trustees or directors of the company should be.

 

He said “Bianca is neither a trustee member nor a Director of OTL and it is good to note that OTL is a different property from the things the late Ikemba Ojukwu had and the directorship cannot be transferred through a Will.”

 

Though Ifeukwu counsel for ,the late Ojukwu, Emeka Onyemelukwe, insisted that the Will read at the Enugu State High Court Registrar was authentic and sacrosanct.

 

He reacted to a claim by one of Ojukwu’s children, Emeka Ojukwu Jnr. who said that the Will was manipulated. Onyemelukwe argued that he had been close to the late Ojukwu since his return from exile in Cote d’Ivoire in 1982. He also said that all Ojukwu’s legal papers were still with him, including those of properties and chattels willed to Emeka Jnr, who claimed he did not know him as his father’s lawyer or friend.

 

Meanwhile, Ojukwu Jnr. has taken over his father’s residence in Nnewi, “according to the Igbo tradition that the first son would inherit his father’s house and compound on the event of his death.”

 

 Ojukwu (Jnr.) said even if the Will had not covered the Nnewi residence, it was traditionally statutory that the first son inherits his father’s house.