NATIVE COURTS IN NIGERIA
| Published date | 01 April 1953 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1953.tb00983.x |
| Date | 01 April 1953 |
80 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN
ADMINISTRATION
and intermarriage, many people have an interest in more than one plot.
Thus,
some years ago a notable of Merowe died. He had interests in fourteen plots and
twenty-two heirs.
When
the estate was divided up among his heirs no less
than
1,600 shares were created, all of which had to be entered in the register (in duplicate).
The
trouble when aresident owns shares in several plots is
that
he has to waste a
lot of time in walking from one to another in order to cultivate his share. Only
when
the
plots are too far away does he leave the cultivation to another and collect
the small customary share of the crop as rent.
Fragmentation, according to the register, does not happen,
but
in practice it
occurs.
The
dividing up of a plot among co-owners is one form, and occasionally
a man will take a piece of land equal in area to his share and develop it independently,
e.g. as a fruit garden. But because of the lucky mistake in the initial compilation
of the register whereby all beneficial interests were registered as legal interests,
true
fragmentation-the
subdivision into small separately registered
plots-is
fortunately
impracticable. Otherwise each one of the 26,000
sagia
plots in
Northern
Province
could be split up into an average of twenty-eight small independent plots. But for
strict safeguards this could happen when the trustee system is introduced.
Aknowledge of what has happened in
the
Sudan should help us in the future.
Aperson, or a country, can never prosper unless it is willing to learn by its own
and other people's mistakes. So I do urge that before any new registration is
undertaken, athorough inquiry is made of
the
local customary tenures before
settlement and
that
the social and economic implications of registration are fully
examined.
NATIVE COURTS IN NIGERIA
IN
1950 Commissions were appointed to enquire into the working of
the
native
court system in Nigeria.
Reprinted below are the paragraphs of the Reports of the Commissions which
contain
the
conclusions and recommendations in respect of the Northern and
Western Regions.
I.
NORTHERN
REGION!.
609.
It
has been necessary in a survey of the native court system to go back
into the past and consider the history of the years that preceded British Admin-
istration and of the last fifty years. A larger
number
of paragraphs than may at
first glance have appeared requisite have been given up to a consideration of
the
judicial system of the country in which the native courts worked on parallel lines
before the reforms in 1933, and of which they became an integral part by the
system of appeals introduced by the Native Courts Ordinance enacted in 1934, in
order not only to get a more complete perspective of the whole system and the
working of the native courts
but
also to explain why in the opinion both of judges
of the Supreme Court at the time and administrative officers who had experience
of them, the dual organisation ran more smoothly when it was linked to the
Provincial Courts.
610. After the Fulani Jihad there followed a century during which there was
little contact with the outside world.
This
is a short period in
human
history and
allowed of no development from within.
This
was succeeded by fifty years of
British administration during which period the working of the Mohammedan
system on pre-existing lines was respected in return for the co-operation and
lReport
of the
Native
Courts
(Northern
Provinces) Commission of
Enquiry:
Mr.
Justice Brooke, Sole Commissioner, 1952.
Government
Printer.
pp. 190. 9d.
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