THE IDEA OF LAW IN YORUBA CONCEPTUAL SCHEME: AN INTERROGATORY DISCOURSE

摘要

Law is one of the items that galvanise human society. As an item of ensuring social order in human society, it is viewed as inevitable for no society can survive without rules and regulations that is often codenamed 'law'. Thus, law could be considered as a universal phenomenon. However, the universality of law as a concept could be more meaningful if such is envisaged within the society it is adopted. It is within this presumption that the discourse attempts an exposition of the YoruÌbaì idea of law to orchestrate the inevitability of individual-universalism as a measure of sustaining cultural identity. Using the critical method of philosophical investigation, the chapter suggests a possible and positive deconstruction of the imposed status of Eurocentric ideas as a universal ideas, since YoruÌbaì in her own history is an embodiment of ideas that could qualify her as rational and independent in her own history of ideas. This is amplified by the claim that no culture can claim superiority over the other since each culture is unique in her own worldview. Hence, the chapter advocates reconciliatory theory of law as that which is sacrosanct to understanding the meaning and nature of law from YoruÌbaì perspective.