JUDICIAL ATTITUDE TO IGBO CUSTOMARY LAWS ON THE INHERITANCE RIGHTS OF WOMEN: BEYOND THE PRESENT EUPHORIA OF JUDICIAL PRONOUNCEMENTS

Abstract

Much judicial and academic thought has gone into the subject matter of the right of women to inherit real property among the Igbo people of Nigeria. A lot of sentiments bothering on emotions have attended the discourse and the adjudicatory process culminating from cases on that subject. Most of the sentiments seem to bother on the personalities and circumstances involved in the individual cases and the fact that the cases were coming at an era that feminism seems to have succeeded in affecting the perception of our immediate society to an extent that anything that seems to put a female at a disadvantage is seen as barbaric and anti-social. Igbo customary laws bearing on the inheritance rights of women have come under unmitigated battering in courts in the most recent past. Whether such scathing remarks are justifiable enough or not is of the essence of this work which is aimed at examining the laws concerning the inheritance rights of women with a view to ascertaining whether the Customary Law of the Igbo people of Nigeria on the subject matter deserves the invectives and odium frequently poured on it at each judicial determination.