AN APPRAISAL OF LEGAL PLURALISM IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF PENAL AND CRIMINAL CODES IN NIGERIA: A CALL FOR HARMONISATION

Abstract

The Nigerian society is made up of people with
diverse cultures, behaviours and ways of life. In the pre-
colonial Nigeria, there were in existence some plural
criminal justice systems which regulated the standard of
behaviour of the people. In the North, for instance, the
predominantly Muslim community had a highly developed
criminal justice system with different Schools, the most
prominent being the Maliki school of jurisprudence.1 In the
South, there were in existence, in each of the settlements,
some customary criminal laws which were generally
unwritten.2With the coming of the British, the English
common law system was introduced in the Lagos colony.3
In 1904, Lord Lugard, then the Governor General,
introduced the Queensland Criminal Code in the North
which incidentally was made applicable to the whole of
Nigeria in 1916, after amalgamation of the Northern and
Southern Protectorates in 1914.