Nigeria's Supreme Court upheld Gladys Ukeje's share of her father's Lagos estate and declared the Igbo rule excluding daughters void in 2014

Lazarus Ogbonnaya Ukeje, a native of Umuahia, lived most of his life in Lagos and owned real property there. He died intestate in December 1981. Letters of administration dated 15 June 1982 went to his widow, Lois Chituru Ukeje, and their son, Enyinnaya Lazarus Ukeje. His daughter Gladys Ada Ukeje was left out. She sued in the Lagos State High Court in 1982. The widow and son denied she was his daughter, and defence witnesses said Igbo custom bars daughters, and women generally, from inheriting land. The trial court relied on her birth certificate, a guarantor's form the deceased had signed, and family photographs. It found she was his daughter, revoked the grant and put the estate with the Administrator-General until the five children chose three or four of themselves to apply for fresh letters. The Court of Appeal in Lagos dismissed the appeal. On 11 April 2014 a five-justice panel of the Supreme Court dismissed the further appeal unanimously. In the lead judgment, Bode Rhodes-Vivour JSC held that the Igbo customary law which stops a female child sharing her father's estate breaches section 42(1) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution and is void. The case ran from 1982 to 2014. No public record of the final distribution of the Lagos property was found^†.