Voice of the Dead: Yorùbá Spiritual Justice, English Jurisprudence, and the Making of Inheritance Law in the British Colony of Lagos (1863–1938)

Abstract In early colonial Lagos, inheritance disputes laid bare the exclusionary and discriminatory character of British jurisprudence. British judges, ill-versed in Yorùbá customary law, mimicked Indigenous Yorùbá judicial structures without recognizing their communal or spiritual foundations. By privileging written testamentary documents and civil marriages over nuncupative wills and customary unions, the colonial legal regime engendered an unstable inheritance system that marginalized numerous Yorùbá litigants. In response, Yorùbá communities and intellectuals mobilized to foreground the sacred, ritualized basis of Indigenous inheritance practices, advocating for a legal framework that could legitimately reconcile colonial authority with the spiritual dimensions of Yorùbá personhood. This article examines tensions between Indigenous African and European laws during colonial rule. It is also an inquiry into the claims and counterclaims about who had the authority to speak on behalf of deceased Yorùbá subjects in colonial Lagos.