Reporting News and opinions
When a customary marriage is dissolved in Nigeria, the distribution of property and assets does not follow the same rules as a statutory (court) marriage. While statutory marriages are governed by Section 72 of the “Matrimonial Causes Act (MCA)” which grants judges wide discretion to divide matrimonial properties equitably, customary marriages are governed strictly by “Native Law and Custom”, subject to constitutional tests of fairness.
In Nigeria’s plural legal system, a marriage is meant to be dissolved in accordance with the law under which it was celebrated.
Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State was re-elected for a second term in the 15 August governorship contest. It was an off-cycle election like no other before it, in the build-up, with its eerie elements of tension, violence and resultant deaths.
On 23 August, I wrote on this platform about the danger of treating the law as an optional accessory in suspicious deaths. I asked a simple question: when a Nigerian dies suddenly and in circumstances requiring investigation, who decides how that death occurred? The family, or the law?
Reform UK has now taken that quiet administrative habit and turned it into an actual policy platform, delivered at a press conference rather than buried in a PDF. Deputy leader Richard Tice has confirmed the party will prioritise British-born workers under 35 for social housing, alongside military veterans and married couples with children, should Reform enter government. The pitch comes wrapped in an infrastructure promise, 50,000 affordable homes a year, financed, the party insists, without new taxes or borrowing, which is the political equivalent of promising a birthday cake that requires no oven, no flour and no birthday.
