Oracles And Autocrats: The Uses of Customary Law

During colonial rule, Nigerian law had been a roan institution that mixed English common law with the traditional forms of “village” law that the British called “custom.” The civilian governments that ruled Nigeria in its first years of independence opposed custom—they saw it as pseudotradition and argued that it was a relic of colonialism that had only served British interests. When soldiers took power, they changed course, embracing forms of custom that their civilian predecessors had shunned. They took customary law’s African characteristics at face value, arguing that they could be the building blocks of a genuinely decolonized form of public administration. They also valued custom as a tool to impose discipline, which was one of their ideological touchstones. Like the British before them, Nigeria’s soldiers saw “traditional” forms of government as cheap, pliable, and naturally disciplinarian.