WOMEN AND SUCCESSION UNDER IGBO CUSTOMARY LAW: AN ONTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

There is increasing modern tendency over contentions on property inheritance at customary law. The focus of theseeming impasse has diametrically polarized the society and pitched one gender against the other. This isparticularly so where settlement of succession is based on intestacy as opposed to inter vivos or testamentarydisposition and in this wise, accentuated by the dictates of primordial cultural tenets anchored on the people’sontology. Echoes from the courts on this score have in the main, attempted to settle the issue based on the oftensubjective test of the repugnancy doctrine. Thus, judicial interventions and crass legalism have not, in the face ofpersistent tacit resistance at the community level, settled the needless impasse with finality of permanence. Thispaper posits that unless and until the courts comprehend, appreciate and aptly apply the people’s ontology viewedfrom the people’s prism, the needless unhealthy gender rivalry will persist to the detriment of the society.