Decolonising Nigerian Private Law: An Original Theoretical Contribution to Post-Colonial Legal Pluralism

Nigerian private law retains a colonial architecture that privileges received English common law over indigenous legal traditions, customary law systems, and the lived legal experiences of millions of Nigerians, generating a structural mismatch between formal law and social reality that the decolonisation movement in legal scholarship demands be directly confronted. This study advances an original theoretical contribution to the decolonisation of Nigerian private law, developing a Post-Colonial Legal Pluralism (PCLP) framework that reconceptualises the relationship between received law, customary law, and indigenous legal principles in Nigerian private law adjudication and legislation. Using a transformative theoretical methodology integrating post-colonial legal theory, African jurisprudence, comparative legal pluralism from South Africa and Zimbabwe, and multi-site empirical research conducted across South East, North West, and South South communities involving 100 community leaders, customary law practitioners, academic experts, and legal reform advocates, the research identifies the mechanisms through which colonial legal structures continue to produce exclusion and injustice in contemporary Nigerian private law. The PCLP framework constitutes the study's original contribution to knowledge, proposing principles for the equal standing of customary law, the judicial integration of indigenous legal thought, and the development of hybrid private law doctrines that reflect Nigeria's plural legal heritage. Findings reveal that decolonisation of Nigerian private law is both necessary and practically achievable within existing constitutional frameworks. Recommendations include curriculum reform in Nigerian law faculties, legislative recognition of customary private law, and judicial guidelines for pluralist adjudication. Keywords: decolonisation, post-colonial law, legal pluralism, customary law, indigenous jurisprudence