A Farmland Dispute in the Wrong Courtroom: The Limits of Sharia Court Jurisdiction: Lumo v. Abu [2026] 11 NWLR (Pt. 2052) 473 — Supreme Court of Nigeria
Does it matter which court hears your case if every party involved is Muslim and everyone agrees Islamic law should apply? According to the Supreme Court in Lumo v. Abu, it matters enormously — because a court's power to hear a dispute doesn't come from who the parties are or what law they'd like applied. It comes from the Constitution, and the Constitution drew a much narrower box around the Sharia Court of Appeal than several courts along the way seemed to assume. You may see a similar post, Won Three Times, Sent Back to Square One: A Twenty-Year Inheritance Fight Undone by a Missing Signature: Katsayel v. Abdullahi [2026] 12 NWLR (Pt. 2053) 1 — Supreme Court of Nigeria on the jurisdictional nature of the Sharia court of Appeal.
Abu told a very different story. He said he had held and worked the land for over three decades, had built on part of it and farmed the rest, and that the siblings' father had never once, in his lifetime, challenged Abu's right to it. As far as Abu was concerned, everyone in the community knew the farmland was rightfully his.
At its heart, this was a straightforward ownership dispute: had the father owned the land and merely lent it, or did it genuinely belong to Abu?
The Journey Through the Courts
The Lower Sharia Court sided with the Lumo family and awarded them the land. Abu appealed to the Upper Sharia Court, which dismissed his appeal. He then appealed further to the Sokoto State Sharia Court of Appeal — which reversed course entirely, allowed his appeal, and set aside the earlier decisions in the family's favour.
The Lumo family, now on the losing end, appealed to the Court of Appeal, arguing that the Sharia Court of Appeal had no business hearing the case in the first place — that a farmland ownership dispute simply wasn't the kind of matter the Sharia Court of Appeal was built to decide. The Court of Appeal disagreed and held that the Sharia Court of Appeal did have the necessary jurisdiction. The family pressed on to the Supreme Court.
Jurisdiction comes from statute, not from the parties or from convenience. The Court stressed that a court's subject-matter jurisdiction is fixed by the law that creates it — it isn't something litigants can hand over by agreement, nor something a court can stretch to cover a case it would simply be convenient to hear. The Sharia Court of Appeal exists under section 275 of the Constitution, and its powers are defined, not assumed.
The Sharia Court of Appeal's jurisdiction is narrowly and specifically listed. Section 277 of the Constitution spells out exactly what the Sharia Court of Appeal can decide: questions of Islamic personal law touching marriage and its validity or dissolution, family relationships and guardianship of infants, gifts, wills, succession, and the maintenance or guardianship of Muslims who are infirm — plus any other question the parties have specifically asked to have determined under Islamic personal law. The Court explained that personal law, as a legal category, is about who a person is within their family and community — their marriages, their kin, their guardianship arrangements — not about their commercial or property dealings with the world at large, however religiously observant everyone involved happens to be.
Being Muslim, or wanting Islamic law applied, isn't enough to bring a dispute within that jurisdiction. This was the crux of the case. A dispute over who owns a piece of farmland is not, by its nature, a question of personal status or family relationship — it is a straightforward property dispute. The Court found it beyond argument that the Lumo family's claim had nothing to do with any of the specific categories listed in section 277. That the parties were Muslims, and that Islamic law might well govern how such a dispute is ultimately resolved on the facts, doesn't transform an ownership dispute into a matter of Islamic personal law for jurisdictional purposes.
Land jurisdiction sits elsewhere entirely. The Court pointed to the Land Use Act, which places jurisdiction over land held under statutory or customary right of occupancy squarely with the High Court, or with an Area or Customary Court — not with the Sharia Court of Appeal. The one narrow exception where land could fall within the Sharia Court of Appeal's reach is where the dispute concerns a waqf, gift, will, or succession involving a Muslim endower, donor, testator, or deceased person. A dispute over a farmland simply lent and never returned doesn't fit that description.
No court, and no party, can manufacture jurisdiction that doesn't exist. The Court closed this part of its reasoning with a broader institutional point: a court's role is to interpret and apply the law, not to expand its own reach through a generous reading of a statute. Neither the parties' agreement nor a strained interpretation of section 277 could hand the Sharia Court of Appeal power over a dispute the Constitution never gave it.
A pointed warning about repeat litigation. In a separate contribution, one member of the panel added a notable observation: this exact jurisdictional question — whether the Sharia Court of Appeal's reach extends beyond personal law — has already been settled repeatedly by the Supreme Court in earlier cases. Bringing the same, already-settled point back to the apex court purely to have it restated again, he warned, amounts to an abuse of the court's process and wastes the limited time of a court meant to resolve genuinely difficult, unresolved questions of law.
The Facts
Sani Lumo, together with seven siblings, sued Alhaji Abu at the Lower Sharia Court in Dogondaji, Sokoto State, over a farmland their late father had lent to Abu. With their father a year deceased and the family preparing to divide his estate, they wanted the land back, describing exactly where its boundaries sat — bordered by a mosque, a road, a school, and a main road. Every effort to retrieve the land from Abu had failed, and they asked the court to compel its return.Abu told a very different story. He said he had held and worked the land for over three decades, had built on part of it and farmed the rest, and that the siblings' father had never once, in his lifetime, challenged Abu's right to it. As far as Abu was concerned, everyone in the community knew the farmland was rightfully his.
At its heart, this was a straightforward ownership dispute: had the father owned the land and merely lent it, or did it genuinely belong to Abu?
The Journey Through the Courts
The Lower Sharia Court sided with the Lumo family and awarded them the land. Abu appealed to the Upper Sharia Court, which dismissed his appeal. He then appealed further to the Sokoto State Sharia Court of Appeal — which reversed course entirely, allowed his appeal, and set aside the earlier decisions in the family's favour.
The Lumo family, now on the losing end, appealed to the Court of Appeal, arguing that the Sharia Court of Appeal had no business hearing the case in the first place — that a farmland ownership dispute simply wasn't the kind of matter the Sharia Court of Appeal was built to decide. The Court of Appeal disagreed and held that the Sharia Court of Appeal did have the necessary jurisdiction. The family pressed on to the Supreme Court.
The Court's Reasoning
Jurisdiction is the foundation everything else rests on. The Court opened with a reminder that jurisdiction isn't a minor technicality — it's the very basis on which a court is entitled to hear and decide a case at all. Where it's missing, no matter how carefully or fairly a case is tried, the whole proceeding is void from the start. Because of that, any genuine question about jurisdiction has to be resolved before a court goes any further with a matter.Jurisdiction comes from statute, not from the parties or from convenience. The Court stressed that a court's subject-matter jurisdiction is fixed by the law that creates it — it isn't something litigants can hand over by agreement, nor something a court can stretch to cover a case it would simply be convenient to hear. The Sharia Court of Appeal exists under section 275 of the Constitution, and its powers are defined, not assumed.
The Sharia Court of Appeal's jurisdiction is narrowly and specifically listed. Section 277 of the Constitution spells out exactly what the Sharia Court of Appeal can decide: questions of Islamic personal law touching marriage and its validity or dissolution, family relationships and guardianship of infants, gifts, wills, succession, and the maintenance or guardianship of Muslims who are infirm — plus any other question the parties have specifically asked to have determined under Islamic personal law. The Court explained that personal law, as a legal category, is about who a person is within their family and community — their marriages, their kin, their guardianship arrangements — not about their commercial or property dealings with the world at large, however religiously observant everyone involved happens to be.
Being Muslim, or wanting Islamic law applied, isn't enough to bring a dispute within that jurisdiction. This was the crux of the case. A dispute over who owns a piece of farmland is not, by its nature, a question of personal status or family relationship — it is a straightforward property dispute. The Court found it beyond argument that the Lumo family's claim had nothing to do with any of the specific categories listed in section 277. That the parties were Muslims, and that Islamic law might well govern how such a dispute is ultimately resolved on the facts, doesn't transform an ownership dispute into a matter of Islamic personal law for jurisdictional purposes.
Land jurisdiction sits elsewhere entirely. The Court pointed to the Land Use Act, which places jurisdiction over land held under statutory or customary right of occupancy squarely with the High Court, or with an Area or Customary Court — not with the Sharia Court of Appeal. The one narrow exception where land could fall within the Sharia Court of Appeal's reach is where the dispute concerns a waqf, gift, will, or succession involving a Muslim endower, donor, testator, or deceased person. A dispute over a farmland simply lent and never returned doesn't fit that description.
No court, and no party, can manufacture jurisdiction that doesn't exist. The Court closed this part of its reasoning with a broader institutional point: a court's role is to interpret and apply the law, not to expand its own reach through a generous reading of a statute. Neither the parties' agreement nor a strained interpretation of section 277 could hand the Sharia Court of Appeal power over a dispute the Constitution never gave it.
A pointed warning about repeat litigation. In a separate contribution, one member of the panel added a notable observation: this exact jurisdictional question — whether the Sharia Court of Appeal's reach extends beyond personal law — has already been settled repeatedly by the Supreme Court in earlier cases. Bringing the same, already-settled point back to the apex court purely to have it restated again, he warned, amounts to an abuse of the court's process and wastes the limited time of a court meant to resolve genuinely difficult, unresolved questions of law.
The Verdict
The Supreme Court unanimously allowed the appeal, holding that the Sharia Court of Appeal, Sokoto State never had jurisdiction to hear Abu's appeal from the Upper Sharia Court. The matter was remitted — not to any Sharia court, but to the High Court of Sokoto State — for proper hearing and determination.Key Takeaways
- A court's jurisdiction comes from the statute that creates it, not from what the parties want or agree to. No amount of consent between litigants can hand a court power it was never given.
- The Sharia Court of Appeal's jurisdiction is limited to specific categories of Islamic personal law — marriage, family relationships, guardianship, wills, succession, and infirm persons' welfare — and does not extend to ordinary property or land disputes.
- Being Muslim, or wanting Islamic law applied to a dispute, does not by itself bring that dispute within Sharia Court of Appeal jurisdiction. The subject matter of the claim is what matters, not the identity or preference of the parties.
- Ownership disputes over land fall under the Land Use Act, which vests jurisdiction in the High Court or an Area or Customary Court — not the Sharia Court of Appeal, except in the narrow case of a waqf, gift, will, or succession involving a Muslim.
- A judgment delivered without jurisdiction is void from the outset, however carefully conducted the proceedings were. Jurisdiction has to be resolved as a threshold question before a court can properly do anything else.
- Repeatedly litigating a point of law the Supreme Court has already settled can itself amount to an abuse of court process — a caution worth remembering before appealing a genuinely settled question all the way to the apex court.
Test
- What is the scope of the Sharia court of Appeal's jurisdiction according to this judgment?
- What warning did the supreme court issue regarding future appeals on this topic?
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