Publication title information
Diala, Anthony C (2018). 'Legal pluralism and social change: Insights from matrimonial property rights in Nigeria’ . In Rautenbach C (ed) In the sSade of an African Baobab: Tom Bennett's Legacy (Juta)
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Books and chapters
Description
Can state legal frameworks facilitate rights-friendly attitudinal changes in individuals who observe customary law? This question invites conceptual assessment of the relationship between law, property, and social change, which is particularly significant in Africa because of the way relatively sophisticated European laws were imposed on agrarian political economies. As the dominant normative order, state law’s promotion of social change depends on the extent to which its framework allows practices such as customary law’s non-recognition of women’s matrimonial property rights in many parts of Nigeria. In the context of marriage under both customary and civil law, this non-recognition encourages normative shopping aimed at utilising the benefits of statutory law. However, normative shopping occurs in a total absence of clear constitutional provisions on equality, matrimonial property rights, and the status of customary law in Nigeria’s legal system. Using the notion that law expresses ‘society’s ideas of acceptable conduct,’ this paper examines the interface between legal pluralism, social change, and Nigeria’s legal framework on matrimonial property rights. It argues that lacunae in the legal framework discourage contestations of matrimonial property rights in social fields involving state law and customary law, thereby discouraging people from adapting the customary law of matrimonial property to socioeconomic changes. As measures for inducing rights-friendly normative changes in individuals who observe customary law, it suggests constitutional guarantee of matrimonial property rights, enforceable right to culture, and equality clauses in relevant laws and policies.
About the author/s
Anthony C Diala
Anthony Chima Diala is Associate Professor at the Department of Private Law at UWC. An advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, he has published on customary law, human rights, and constitutionalism. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2582-0139
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