● Lagos takes control of late industrialist Labode Akindele’s sprawling estate as children, widows and relatives fight dirty
● Six years after his death, estate remains locked in bitter succession battle
● How a disputed Will, missing Family Constitution and properties stretching from Lagos to Britain, Spain deepen the legal fight
● Court places the estate under the Administrator-General pending determination of the suit
By Segun Ibidapo
The dead usually leave behind silence. But Chief Labode Oladimeji Akindele left behind a fortune large enough to keep his family talking for six years.
When the billionaire industrialist died at 88 on June 29, 2020, he left behind companies, properties and investments scattered across Nigeria and beyond its borders. He also left a Will. That document, which should have settled the question of what happened to his wealth after his death, has become the very object of the dispute.
Now the Lagos State High Court has taken control of the battlefield. Pending judgment, the Administrator-General of Lagos State will oversee the sprawling estate as Akindele’s children, widows, relatives and associates continue their legal struggle over the validity of the testament, the status of a disputed Family Constitution and the fate of assets stretching from Lagos to Britain and Spain.
For the moment, the sprawling estate is no longer in private hands. And the court’s decision has altered the balance of the long-running succession fight.
Assets accumulated by one of Nigeria’s notable industrialists now sit under official supervision while the court determines a question that has proved remarkably difficult to answer: which testamentary document, if any, should govern the distribution and administration of Akindele’s estate?
The case, Suit No. LD/10/2020, is before Justice Tanimola Ajorin-Ajose of the Lagos State High Court.
At its centre is Oladipo Alade Akindele, who describes himself as the seventh biological child and first son of the late businessman.
His challenge strikes at the foundation of the estate’s administration. He wants the court to declare the purported Will invalid and incapable of determining how his father’s assets should be distributed or managed.
The defendants have rejected that position. As a result, what began as a family disagreement has consequently grown into a complicated probate battle, with implications stretching beyond Nigeria.
The estate reaches into Britain and includes interests connected to Spain. It encompasses business holdings and properties accumulated across decades of commercial activity.
And behind the legal language lies the familiar human drama that accompanies great fortunes after the death of their architects: children asking who was favoured, documents being scrutinised, old family arrangements revisited and questions of ownership becoming questions of memory, legitimacy and power.
Chief Akindele belonged to an older generation of Nigerian entrepreneurs whose fortunes were built across several sectors.
His business interests extended through maritime services, fishing, finance, real estate and international investments.
Companies associated with his business empire included Fairgate Group Limited, Fairgate Estates Limited, Fairgate Investments Limited and Madandola Group.
The businesses and properties accumulated over the years created an estate substantial enough to sustain a succession dispute of unusual scale.
Akindele’s death on June 29, 2020, therefore left behind something larger than a collection of properties and corporate interests.
It left an intricate web of assets requiring careful administration.
That responsibility was expected to fall under the arrangements contained in his Will.
Instead, the Will itself became the object of litigation.
The claimant has questioned its execution, its completeness and its ability to determine the distribution of the estate.
Among his complaints is the alleged absence of a Family Protocol referred to in the testament.
According to his case, the document was important because several operative provisions of the Will depended upon it.
He says that after obtaining a Certified True Copy of the Will, he inspected the original deposited at the Probate Registry.
He says the alleged Family Protocol was missing. His case is that the omission rendered the testament incomplete and incapable of proper implementation.
But the defendants disagree arguing that they identify the document as the “Sir (Chief) Olabode Oladimeji Akindele Family Constitution” and maintain that it was properly executed by the deceased, some of his children and another family member between October and November 2018.
They argue that the Constitution was sufficiently incorporated into and identified by the Will.
Its physical attachment, they contend, was not essential to the validity of the testament. That disagreement now forms one of the central legal questions before the court.
The challenge extends beyond the alleged absence of the Family Constitution.
Akindele’s son has also raised questions concerning the execution date of the Will, including an allegation that the date was altered.
He has further argued that the document failed adequately to identify substantial assets belonging to his father.
Among those assets are properties in different parts of the United Kingdom and a family residence in Spain known as “Nigerian House.”
For a family fortune spread across jurisdictions, such omissions can have consequences far beyond a dispute over wording.
They can determine which assets fall under particular testamentary arrangements, which court has jurisdiction and which beneficiaries may eventually acquire control.
That is one reason the Nigerian proceedings have developed a cross-border dimension.
Related proceedings are ongoing in the United Kingdom concerning a Grant of Probate issued by the Probate Registry of England and Wales.
The Nigerian dispute has therefore travelled with the estate.
The questions being argued in Lagos have consequences in London and elsewhere, where ownership, probate and administration of Akindele’s foreign interests may also have to be resolved.
Few documents in the dispute have attracted as much attention as the Family Constitution. The claimant’s position is that the document was indispensable to the Will because provisions of the testament depended on it.
Yet, he says, the document was absent from the copy he obtained and from the original he later inspected at the Probate Registry.
The defendants have offered a different account. They say the document existed, was executed and had been properly incorporated into the Will.
Their position is that the absence of a physical attachment does not invalidate the testament where the document has been sufficiently identified and incorporated.
The court will ultimately have to determine which interpretation survives legal scrutiny. Until then, the Family Constitution remains one of the most consequential pieces in the succession puzzle.
Family constitutions are often designed to regulate relationships around substantial family enterprises, especially where wealth extends across generations.
They may define responsibilities, succession arrangements and expectations among family members.
For the Akindele family, the dispute over whether such a document was properly incorporated into the Will has become inseparable from the larger question of how the patriarch intended his wealth to be administered after his death.
Akindele’s son has challenged the estate’s administration from the beginning, claiming he was the deceased’s seventh biological child and first son.
He has also complained that he was not invited to the reading of the Will at the Probate Registry on August 17, 2020, despite being named as a beneficiary.
The defendants dispute the significance of that omission.
They say the Probate Registry had limited attendance and that beneficiaries living abroad were not invited because of the short notice.
They reject the suggestion that his absence from the reading amounted to a violation of his rights.
Again, the disagreement is not merely about what happened but about what the event meant.
For the claimant, exclusion from the reading forms part of the circumstances surrounding the disputed administration of his father’s estate.
For the defendants, it was an administrative consequence of the circumstances surrounding the probate process and should not be transformed into evidence of an attempt to deprive him of his inheritance.
The court will have to determine where the evidence leads.
Predictably, the litigation has drawn several members of Akindele’s family and circle of associates into the proceedings.
Among the defendants is fashion designer and Tiffany Amber founder, Mrs Folake Coker.
The presence of prominent family members has added public interest to a dispute whose substantive questions remain deeply legal.
But beneath the names lies a more difficult question: what happens to a large family fortune when the document designed to settle its succession becomes the subject of the succession battle itself?
That question has followed the Akindele estate since the dispute began.
The court had earlier issued Status Quo Orders on February 18, 2021, preserving the estate pending determination of the dispute.
Those orders were intended to prevent the underlying assets from becoming casualties of the litigation.
Years later, the court has now gone further by placing the estate under the Administrator-General.
The move effectively removes the disputed estate from private administration while the substantive case continues.
The family dispute has not been confined to courtroom confrontation. Akindele’s son has said the matter once appeared capable of settlement after court-appointed mediation in 2023.
According to his account, a settlement agreement prepared by lawyers representing the defendants was signed by him but was not signed by the other parties.
The settlement therefore did not conclude the dispute.
He further alleges that while he waited for the agreement to be completed, steps were taken to obtain probate in England and Wales after he failed to renew a caveat against the grant.
That development eventually became another front in the battle.
Proceedings are now continuing in the United Kingdom over the Grant of Probate issued there.
The episode illustrates how quickly a family disagreement over an inheritance can cross borders when the fortune involved has been accumulated through decades of international investment.
An estate does not become simpler because its owner has died. Sometimes it becomes considerably more complicated.
The scale of Akindele’s holdings explains why the dispute has proved so difficult to contain.
His commercial life produced interests in several sectors and jurisdictions.
Properties and companies form only part of the equation.
There are revenues, transactions, investments, liabilities and questions about how the estate has been managed since his death.
The claimant is seeking, among other reliefs, a comprehensive account of the estate’s assets, income, expenditure and transactions since Akindele died.
Such an accounting could provide one of the clearest pictures yet of what remains in the estate and how its assets have been administered during the six years of litigation.
The demand also reflects the deeper anxiety common to succession disputes involving large fortunes.
