In Nigeria’s plural legal system, a marriage is meant to be dissolved in accordance with the law under which it was celebrated.
Anarchism in judicial robes, by Owei Lakemfa
My mind raced back to British jurist, Lord Denning who famously declared in 1964: “Justice has no place in darkness or secrecy. When a judge sits on a case, he himself is on trial… If he is suspicious, biased, or unfair, then the judge is the one who is condemned in the eyes of public opinion.” But these words of wisdom seem not to have any meaning to Justice Lifu, shockingly, a former lecturer of Public and International Law, University of Ibadan. For me, what was more distressing was that despite the uproar, Justice Lifu seemed oblivious of the damage he had done to the body polity, the judiciary and his thirty five years post-call to bar history.
When the Family Becomes the Coroner: Has Nigeria Turned Cause of Death into a Matter of Opinion By Lawson Akhigbe
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?
Born Free, Housed First: Reform UK and the Return of the Birth Certificate as Political Document by Lawson Akhigbe
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.
The Nigerian Question: Or, Why the Wheel Still Needs Inventing By Lawson Akhigbe
There is a saying, long attributed to the fog and frustration of Anglo-Irish relations, that goes roughly as follows: anyone who claims to have an answer to the Irish Question has clearly not understood the question. The precise origin of the quip is itself disputed, a fitting irony for an observation about irresolvability. Some give it to Benjamin Disraeli, that most theatrical of Victorian prime ministers.

