The Supreme Court Decision in Ukeje v. Ukeje and the Jurisprudencial Implication Under the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (As Amended)

Abstract

The issue of succession affects everyone as all properties must pass to someone else on death, and death is an inevitable end of everyone. This is invariably why all societies, even the crudest of them, have over time evolved rules of succession for the devolution of properties of a dead person. In Nigeria, there are twin regimes in place to regulate the law of succession and they are: testate and intestate rules of succession^[i]. The intestate rules of succession applies when a person dies without leaving a valid will or when the will left is invalid due to non-compliance with law. While the rule of testate succession, applies where a deceased person had died, leaving valid will. Moreover, it is shown in this work that the intestate rules of succession and inheritance in Nigeria is a reflection of the legal pluralism inherent in Nigeria legal system because it has almost as many variations as there are ethnic groups in the country, and many of the variations are discriminatory in practice, particularly to the female children or illegitimate children.^[ii] However, it was further revealed that the Supreme Court’s decision in Ukeje v. Ukeje^[iii] has succeeded in altering almost all the discriminatory intestate rule of succession. In the light of the above, this work did examine the rule of succession in Nigeria and the extent to which the decision of the supreme court in Ukeje v. Ukeje^[iv] has successfully altered it. It is recommended that the courts as the major agents with respect to the development of the customary law should be active in the reformation of the various customary law rules of succession, so that it can meet with the changes in the society and it is equally concluded that testate succession is the most efficient made of succession, while intestate succession is not quite efficient due to attitude of the society with respect to the attendant discriminatory practice attribute to it.