DAUGHTERS WHO INHERIT: CUSTOMARY LAW, WOMEN'S PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION AFTER UKEJE v UKEJE

Abstract

More than a decade after the Supreme Court decided Ukeje v Ukeje and Anekwe v Nweke on 11 April 2014, the right of Nigerian women to inherit under customary law remained more secure in the law reports than in family practice. The first decision declared void the Igbo customary rule that excluded daughters from their fathers’ estates; the second condemned an Awka custom under which a widow without a son could be dispossessed. Using doctrinal analysis, supported by comparison with South Africa, Kenya and Ghana and by published field research from South-East Nigeria, the study assessed how far the decisions had changed the law. It found that the judgments settled the question of validity but left the question of distribution open. The reach of section 42 of the Constitution over private family arrangements remained uncertain; the Court created an entitlement without fixing its size or addressing ancestral homesteads such as the obi and the igiogbe; widows remained dependent on an occupation-only rule and a precarious repugnancy doctrine; and litigation proved too slow and socially costly to serve as the main means of enforcement. The article argued that only legislation could complete the reform that Ukeje began. It recommended state intestate succession laws with fixed shares for spouses and children, the domestication of the Maputo Protocol, a hotchpot approach to ancestral homesteads, simplified procedures for small estates, and engagement with traditional institutions.