REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1969.tb02287.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1969 |
| Date | 01 January 1969 |
lEEVIE
WS
INDEPENDENT
AFRICA
:
THE
CHALLENGE
TO
THE
LEGAL PROFESSION.
By L.
C.
B.
GOWER.
[Cambridge
Mass:
Harvard University
Press; London: Oxford University Press.
1967.
viii and
154
pp.
82s.
net.]
THESE
are the Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures originally planned for
1965
but in fact delivered in
1966;
the text has occasionally been amended to take
account of recent developments such as the flight of the Ibo students from
the Nigerian Law School. The author was adviser on legal education in
Africa to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, adviser
to
the Nigerian Council of Legal Education, and Professor and Dean of
the law faculty of Lagos University. He was
also
a
member of.the Denning
Committee on Legal Education for African Students. The expectations that
are aroused by such qualifications are not disappointed.
The lectures are divided into three: first the legacy bequeathed by the
colonial powers
to
the-emergent nations of Africa is analysed, with particular
reference to those factors relevant to the legal profession; then an assess-
ment of the fate of that legacy is made, while finally the position of the
legal profession and its training is considered.
Many readers of this
12evisw
might be tempted to go directly to the
chapter’on Legal Education. This would be
a
mistake, for while there is
little of startling originality in the opening lectures, they are marked by
an
unusual clarity and perceptiveness particularly in the treatment of the
emotional legacy of colonialism; furthermore, they form the backcloth against
which the special problems of the legal profession are discussed. Throughout,
one is struck by the tragic ineffectiveness of the good intentions which from
time to time actuated British colonial policy
:
thus,
a
respectable defence
of the policy of indirect rule can be put up on the basis of respect for
indigenous customs and institutions.
‘
The policy failed, miserably, when the
whole sub-structure of gradualism was demolished, yet its effects are still
everywhere apparent; to take one illustration apart from those mentioned
:
in many Africah countries, although indigenous marriage and succession
laws were respected, laws were introduced under missionary influence enabl-
ing the native inhabitants to contract
“
Christian
’’
marriages if they
so
wished. These laws commonly, and logically, debarred persons opting for
Christian marriage from contracting further marriages under customary
Law. But the reality of the situation in which
a
man would contract a
“Christian” marriage, but still feel himself free to govern his right to con-
tract further marriages solely by customary law, was ignored. Many unions
exist, which,
as
a
result, are wholly void, the children thus being illegitimate.
The scope for conflict when the inevitable land succession dispute arises
is
immense.
It
is only now that the consequences of this particular legacy
are
being explored.
When the policy
of
Indirect Rule was ovcrthrown, again, the’view that
only the best is good enough was responsible for
a
vast misdirection of
educational effort
:
universities were created, but designed to produce the
kind of civilised cultured man of letters that was thought to represent the
highcst excellence of the Ancient universities. The classics were preferred
to medicine, history to engineering.
60
per cent. of Nigerian university
students read the humanities and social sciences. And the trappings of
a
nineteenth-century Oxford college were solemnly installed in twentieth-century
Africa; “Those who raised their voices against the creation of academic
107
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