INTENTION IS INFERRED FROM OVERT ACTS

per Nimpar, JCA in Adepoju v. State (2014) LPELR-23312(CA), Intention generally is incapable of positive proof because it is a matter of inference of supporting circumstances of every given case … There is a legal aphorism that even the devil himself does not know the intention of man. Thus, intention is inferred from overt acts. Where there is a confession from the accused and surrounding circumstances of a case, intention can be discovered there from. The actions of the accused provides the basis for concluding on the intention. The significance of intention in a criminal trial is that intention is the purpose or design of the act performed coupled with the desire to do the act. The intention here is evident from the surrounding circumstances.

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P&ID DID NOT ENTER THE CONTRACT TO JUST GET A SETTLEMENT VIA ARBITRATION, WITH THE INTENTION OF NOT PERFORMING

490. Here, I am satisfied P&ID did intend to perform the GSPA when it entered into it, and that there were means by which it could have done so. Nigeria has characterised the GSPA as a sham and contended that P&ID as a BVI-registered company with no obvious assets, no relevant experience and few employees, had no genuine intention of performing the GSPA, and would never have been able to do so. However P&ID did not have to contemplate performing the GSPA itself with its assets, experience and employees. This is not, as it represented, because it could simply use the work on Project Alpha to perform the GSPA. It is rather because ICIL Group had shown in the past that they could contract in. 491. Whilst P&ID was prepared to bribe in the course of its business, I do not accept it was of the sophistication to conceive at the contract stage a plan to extract large sums of money from Nigeria by means of an arbitration or a corrupt settlement. Consistently, P&ID did not use the GSPA to move directly to arbitration at the first available opportunity. I have found it did not (as alleged by Nigeria) corrupt Mr Shasore SAN. And it appointed, in Sir Anthony Evans, an arbitrator of unquestioned experience, expertise and independence. 492. It is in these circumstances that I have reached the conclusion that the present is not a case in which, when the parties entered into the GSPA, P&ID’s intention was not to perform it but simply to use it as a device to get an award or settlement. However that is not the end of Nigeria’s section 68(2)(g) challenge.

— R. Knowles CBE. FRN v. Process & Industrial Developments Limited [2023] EWHC 2638 (Comm)

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EQUITY LOOKS AT THE INTENT RATHER THAN THE FORM

Earl of Oxford’s case (1615) 1 REP CHD, 20 digest (Rep) 252 it is stated thus: “….. Equity looks at the intent rather than the form and will impute an intention to fulfill an obligation. It will impute an intention that the appellant, far from scuttling away from its valid obligation to the respondent, will fully honour its agreement, entered into in January 1978, to indemnify the respondent upon its loss …. It runs against all accepted notions of justice that the appellant should pocket the premium and turn round to jettison the liability.”

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MEANING OF INTENTIONAL AND INTENTION

One may ask: what is “intention” from which the word “intentional” is derived? Intention is the purpose or design with which an act is performed. It is the foreknowledge of the act coupled with the desire to do the act. The foreknowledge and desire form the cause of the act in so far as they fulfil themselves through the operation of the will. An act is intentional if, and in so far as it exists in idea before it exists in the realm of facts; the idea realising itself in the fact because of the desire by which it is accompanied. See Advanced Law Lexicon, 3rd Edition Reprint 2009, page 2394.

— N.S. Ngwuta, JSC. Henry Nwokearu V. The State (SC.227/2011, 24 MAY 2013)

MEANING OF MENS REA

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INTENTION IS INFERRED FROM OVERT ACTS

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P&ID DID NOT ENTER THE CONTRACT TO JUST GET A SETTLEMENT VIA ARBITRATION, WITH THE INTENTION OF NOT PERFORMING

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EQUITY LOOKS AT THE INTENT RATHER THAN THE FORM

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MEANING OF INTENTIONAL AND INTENTION

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