JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

The ideas of law and justice are inseparable. While law can easily be defined as a whole system of rules that everybody in a society has to obey, justice presents a whole array of meaning that bothers on the fair treatment of people necessitated by the need to enforce the law. Largely justice necessitates the law which helps to achieve a just society. This is also the ground they share in Igbo Traditional Religion and culture. However, there is a serious misconception and attempt by some scholars to divest Igbo laws and the entire Justice system of their religio- moral character. These posit Coercion and Fear as their Foundations. In this paper, the researcher employs the research method to explore the origins, meanings, practice and implications of Igbo law and justice in their individual consciousness and organization of her communities. We therefore discovered that for the Igbo, like other Africans whose lives are religiously organized, the promulgation and observance or practice of these two disciplines go beyond the material world because they are intrinsically related to the Divine. Thus the Igbo recognize man as one of the beings in her worldview whose interactions with other beings shape his existence in the material world and beyond. God, the Deities and Ancestors especially regulate his morality and have to be fully represented in their individual lives and communities for their own survival. Here comes the use of Ofo and masquerade society (with the age grades) in both the enactment and practice of the Law and Justice respectively. This paper therefore recommends the better appreciation and adoption of some of the transcendental aspects of the Igbo legal system to mitigate the inefficiencies on the current western practices in Africa.