Forms by which children born outside a family unit are taken into the family have existed since time immemorial in Ethiopia. These forms have varied depending upon the ethnic, religious and regional groupings involved. The relationships created range from rather loose affirmations of close friendship and mutual interest to complete assimilation of the outsider as if he had been born within the family. This article will be concerned only with the later type of customary assimilation, which we will term “adoption”.

In July 1995 this long-awaited Act was signed into law. Its Preamble states that it is: “To provide for the investigation and establishment of as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights committed during the period from 1 March 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in the Constitution, within or without the Republic, emanating from the conflicts of the past, and the fate or whereabouts of the victims of such violations; the granting of amnesty to persons who make full disclosure of acts associated with a political objective committed in the course of the conflicts of the past during the said period; affording victims an opportunity to relate the violations they suffered; the taking of measures aimed at the granting of reparation to, and the rehabilitation and the restoration of the human and civil dignity of, victims of violations of human rights; reporting to the Nation about such violations and victims; the making of recommendations aimed at the prevention of the commission of gross violations of human rights; and for the said purposes to provide for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a Committee on Human Rights Violations, a Committee on Amnesty and a Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation…”

Technology-driven payment instruments and services are facilitating the development of e-commerce; however, security concerns beleaguer their implementation, particularly in developing countries. This article considers the limits of private ordering in the regulation of e-payment systems. It uses Nigeria to exemplify a developing country that is increasingly pushing for the adoption of a regulatory framework for e-payment systems based on private ordering. It argues that, although technical standards and self-regulation by the financial industry are important, law is an essential regulatory mechanism that is largely absent. The article proposes that law be used as a mechanism to set and compel compliance with technical and industry standards, thus building trust, catering to public interest concerns and legitimizing the regulatory process.

The statement above is an admission of failure, or neglect, to design a policy for livestock production and development. The admission appears t o be almost contradictory. Nyerere's leadership of Tanzania had its landmarks, the most indelible of which is probably the Arusha Declaration with its particularly heavy bias towards rural development in its policy objectives. Yet that rural bias conspicuously excluded the role of pastoral communities and their potential in the development of Tanzania's rural economy. The pastoralists are not a majority but constitute a substantial portion of the population. They are entitled, as of right, to proportionate attention by national policies, as well as access to national resources, especially land, proportionate to their needs and potential, just like the cultivators. But government policies in Tanzania have marginalized pastoralists and sometimes even their rights and their very presence have been ignored.

It has become a standard feature of litigation for amici to appear before courts, acting as the vindicator of rights for the politically powerless and marginalized. Their appearance has thus contributed to the promotion and protection of human rights before municipal courts and international tribunals. They have done this through the submission of briefs that seek to broaden perspectives of cases and by advancing innovative legal and factual viewpoints, thus assisting the courts in reaching appropriate conclusions. In Botswana, amicus curiae participation is still at a nascent stage. This is largely due to inflexible rules of standing and the general lack of knowledge of the potential usefulness of the institution by the judiciary. This article argues that, to enhance amicus participation in litigation, thereby enhancing the epistemological quality of its public law jurisprudence, Botswana must pay close attention to the practices and experiences of South Africa where amicus participation has resulted in the phenomenal growth of constitutional jurisprudence.

“A social anthropological approach to property as a social institution leads us to the position where we look upon inheritance not as ‘the entrance of living persons into the possession of dead persons’ property’ (a) or even as ‘succession to all rights of the deceased’ (b) but rather as the transference of statuses from the dead to the living with respect to specific property objects.”2 A man holds many statuses each of which probably gives rights and duties in respect of property; on his death these statuses do not necessarily pass to a single individual—they may well pass individually to a number of persons each of whom succeeds to the rights and duties of the particular status which has passed to him. The status may be transferred or may even disappear. If we analyse the Yoruba customary rules of succession in this manner we shall, I believe, be able to dispel some of the confusion which surrounds the concept of ‘family property’, with its attendant problems—the respective rights of sons and brothers to the deceased's property, the rights of daughters to inherit, the rights attaching to individual and family or inherited property, the distinction between movable and immovable property, the rights over individually held houses or cocoa farms situated on family land.

It is natural that customary law, as compared to written laws, varies like language from tribe to tribe and that in larger or scattered tribes there are different practices within a tribe itself. Customary legal systems have not been recorded in full. For example, the Turkana who are purely pastoral have no formal land law because grazing and rights to water are common to all members of the tribe. The Ndorobo had transitional rights of hunting and honey-gathering in certain ridges, but have refused to extend such exclusive rights to the cattle of the right-holders, while the Bantu generally have highly developed systems of land tenure in their agricultural areas.

This paper considers how the law in Nigeria discriminates against women in respect of the distribution of property on divorce. It also discusses whether international or regional instruments which have been ratified by Nigeria have helped eliminate discrimination against women in this regard.

The question, “What is customary law?”, poses a number of different problems. It can (and no doubt it will) give rise to answers which stem from differing interpretations of the sort of discussion that it is attempting to stimulate. It is fair to suppose that some of these will deal with the jurisprudential aspects of customary law, and its relation to other branches of the law. Others may cover the purely procedural and administrative factors that govern the application of customary law in various countries. And yet others may choose to emphasize the changing nature of customary law and the doubts which surround the precise details of its future in many contemporary countries.

Many books and learned articles have been written on African Law within the last two or three decades. Almost every one of them has attempted a definition of law, custom and customary law, as a basis for its particular object. Among these definitions is Elias's adaptation of Goodhart's definition of law; this definition appeals to us as it serves many purposes. That adaptive definition is: “ ‘The law of a given community is the body of rules which are recognised as obligatory…’ This recognition must be in accordance with the principles of their social imperative, because operating in every community is a dynamic of social conduct, an accepted norm of behaviour which the vast majority of its members regard as absolutely necessary for the common weal. This determinant of the ethos of the community is its social imperative.” We would not of course include within the concept of law forms of social conduct which are concerned with the less important aspects of social life, which though well-established, yet pertain only to the sphere of social formalities and when violated, merely excite the displeasure or contempt of society; we are concerned with those norms the violation of which calls for the employment of “sanctions directly affecting the liberty, property, or status of the offender (such as imprisonment, fines or loss of civil rights)”. But we would include also those “concerned with serious business of society, the work that must be accomplished in order to secure and guarantee satisfactory conditions for collective life,” which Edgar Bodenheimer classifies as “customary law”.

This seems a particularly appropriate time to devote a double issue of the Journal to one topic—constitutional law. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, there is blowing a wind of political change comparable with that identified by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in his famous speech to the South African parliament in Cape Town on 3 February, 1960. The source of that wind was African national consciousness which was impelling the process of decolonisation: in that year, 1960, most of the francophone African states discussed by Reyntjens and Nigeria became independent. By 1968, the process was complete except for Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe. All the new states were endowed with shiny new democratic constitutions, a “Gaullist” or Westminster” legacy from the departing colonial masters.

Eritrea is a territory of about 46,000 sq. miles on the western shore of the Red Sea. It is bounded on the south by Ethiopia, on the north and west by the Sudan, and on the south east by French Somaliland. Its one million inhabitants are divided almost equally between Coptic Christians and Moslems, with a few Europeans, mostly Italians. Eritrea was an Italian colony from 1890 to the 1947 peace treaty which ended World War II, under which Italy renounced all claim to it. The British conquered it in 1941, and administered it until 15th September, 1952, when it became federated with Ethiopia as an autonomous unit, pursuant to a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, passed 2nd December, 1950.2 Eritrea today resembles an American state, with jurisdiction over its local laws, including customary law.

This research began as an attempt to add a codicil to the work on homicide done by Paul Bohannan in the 1950s.2 Although Bohannan looked at events in the colonial period, his appreciation of the way in which cultural norms are expressed in legal institutions is still relevant. The criminal code in Western Nigeria is almost entirely British; it is applied by Nigerian judges to Nigerian accused who are counselled by Nigerian lawyers. The crime of homicide is universal. How a man kills, whom he kills, his motive for killing, and why it is most often a man who kills another man, may all be primarily determined by culture. The precise influence of social and cultural factors upon criminal patterns is impossible to measure. Yet to ignore what cannot be isolated is to commit a gross, but it seems to me inescapable, error. Often it seemed what was possible to tabulate was the least important information, that the conclusions which could be substantiated were trivial or irrelevant. Homicide recommended itself as a crime serious enough to test the efficacy of the Western Nigerian criminal justice system. Yet there are few conclusions here about the nature of that system’s authority. As elsewhere, in Western Nigeria the institutions of criminal justice seem to sit on the surface of the society. The criminal processes are unfamiliar to most people. Often after an accused is taken into custody it is difficult to find relatives or friends to inform about the progress of his case. At the moment of arrest, an accused steps into a totally strange, and largely foreign, world, one from which he may never return. What follows does not attempt to explain such subtle and difficult aspects of criminal law in Western Nigeria; it is an attempt to describe the way in which one particular serious crime was handled by Western Nigerian legal institutions during a specific period of time.

The long-standing Western Sahara dispute which has plagued the OAU finally came to a head in August, 1982, when, as a consequence of the admission of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic to the Organization earlier in the year, the Nineteenth Summit Conference due to have been held in Tripoli was postponed sine die. Following a Moroccan-inspired boycott, an insufficient quorum existed to allow the meeting to proceed. The Western Sahara dispute has emphasised some of the shortcomings of the OAU. Although it may have been initially assumed that the OAU was better suited to handle this dispute, it was handicapped by the intransigent attitudes of the parties to the dispute. Threats to cancel membership of the Organization if the SADR was ever admitted were repeatedly made by Morocco and some of her allies. The SADR secured membership of the OAU in February, 1982, and the worst fears appear to have been confirmed. The question therefore arises as to what the future holds for the OAU, but first it is necessary to examine how the SADR was admitted to the OAU.

With Nigeria's transition from military rule to democratically elected government in May 1999, a new constitution took effect. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, establishes a framework for democratic governance on the basis of a presidential system of government, with a two-chamber National Assembly, and organizes Nigeria as a federal republic. Soon after the new constitutional framework came into effect, it was thrown into the spotlight during a dispute between the president and the National Assembly that caused a four-month delay in the passing of the federal budget for the 2000 fiscal year.

“There is no doubt that once, twice or even several times in your life, you have had to stop for a moment in a street or as you enter into a village, to express sorrow over the lot of a man, a woman or a child looking haggard, badly dressed, underfed and not knowing where to go. Then, you were overwhelmed with a feeling of compassion and a sigh of sadness gripping you by the throat. You could not help but felt concerned and said to yourself it was your duty to ‘make a gesture’ thus listening to the dictate of your conscience.”

Dr Peter Onu, OAU Assistant Secretary General

British administration in overseas countries has conferred no greater benefit than English law and justice. That may be a trite observation, but I offer no apology. It has been said so often by so many people—as many laymen as lawyers and perhaps more Africans than Englishmen—that it must be assumed to be true. But what, in this context, are English law and justice, or similar expressions (it is put in many different ways) to be taken to comprehend ? I have heard one or two lawyers who have served overseas speak as if there were a rebuttable presumption that anything suitable for this country should be acceptable for a country in Africa. Even if that were true, and I am sure it is not, it would not that all English legal rules and institutions are appropriate for Africa, for they are not even suitable for England. It is only too true that the law is sometimes “an ass”. Not so often as some laymen like to claim, though laymen may be fair judges of what is good sense in law. I well remember how as a law student I became impatient with principles, especially in the law of torts and the rules of evidence, which to my mind left a large gap between law on the one hand and justice or common sense on the other. I am well aware that in my critical attitude I was at one with the majority, and all lawyers must welcome the labours of the Law Reform Committees, which have borne fruit in a steady stream of important Bills during the last thirty years.

The Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) was instituted by the Lagos Treaty which was signed by fifteen original member states on 28 May, 1975. A few months later, Cape Verde acceded to the Treaty, thus increasing the number of member states to sixteen. In its composition, ECOWAS could be regarded as a microcosm of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) because, like the OAU, it comprises different sovereign African countries with varying colonial, political, social and cultural backgrounds. However, compared with the existing African Economic Unions, ECOWAS is, to date, unique; because, unlike them, it is a multilingual organisation. It is precisely on this multilingual nature of the organisation that this paper intends to focus.

Recent events and a few judicial decisions in Nigeria show the need for a serious analytical engagement with the law relating to dead bodies. Topical issues from these cases focus on jurisdiction, the right to control the disposition of remains, and remedies available for the infringement of a burial right. While the meaning and content of sepulchral rights remain the same in Nigeria as in many industrialized nations, its prioritization is markedly different. In contrast to the highly individualized nature of burial rights in many Western legal systems, the control of sepulchral right in Nigeria is familial in character. In some circumstances, however, recourse may be had to statutory provisions that import English priority rules. While a range of remedies is available for an interference with a burial right, injunctions and declarations are the most sought after by Nigerian litigants. An expedited hearing is preferable to an interlocutory order of injunction.