Onimim Briggs

Onimim Briggs is increasing transparency and fairness in Nigeria's judicial system by documenting and bringing to public light its most elusive element–previously unwritten customary law.

Customary laws passed down orally through generations of Nigerian societies are used widely throughout the country to render justice. Because they are undocumented, however, they often lead to distortion and manipulation. In some cases, they contradict the Nigerian constitution, for example, when they are used to sustain the oppression of women or dispossession of the indigent. Onimim sees a need for legal reform, but she also recognizes that one must know the law to change it. She is thus developing this obscure, yet commonly invoked, source of law into a visible judicial reference point. Through a participatory research methodology that takes her and her team into communities to learn, document, and verify customary laws with the people who know and use them, she is systematically documenting Nigerian customary laws to make them widely available to public officials, researchers, lawyers, and the public. Using this methodology, her model goes beyond research to create a dialogue about customary law and its reform. She ultimately aims to have customary law included in law school curriculums. Documentation, dissemination, and education of these laws will reduce distortion and provide Onimim and other legal reformers a basis for future reform efforts.

Nigeria has three legal systems–statutory, Islamic, and customary–each of which has its own courts. Customary courts deal primarily with personal and family laws and derive their legitimacy from the traditional customs and practices of the various ethnic groups that make up Nigeria. Most of customary law, however, is unwritten, its validity dependent on the judgment of the traditional chiefs and elders of a particular community. Such law is thus vulnerable to the whims of those in power, who may have an interest in a case being decided in a particular way. Despite this risk of manipulation, all levels of the judiciary, including the statutory Supreme Court, apply customary laws with the same consequences as any written law.
In addition to potential distortions, the oral nature of customary law tends to cause inadvertent violation. People who move or marry into a community, or do business there, face particular difficulties. A foreign company, for instance, could buy land and find out years later that they bought it from the wrong person. Intercommunity disputes over perceived or real transgressions of the laws are common. Invisible customary laws also often persist in violation of statutory law. Such laws are notorious for perpetuating the unequal treatment of women, even though the Nigerian constitution forbids it. Without documentation, however, it is difficult for anyone to challenge them.
Few efforts have been made to address these problems stemming from customary law tradition. A limited book was published in the late 1950s, and the Federal Ministry of Justice has further released a couple of documents and held some workshops on the subject. However, a thorough customary law compilation is not available, and ill-equipped courts thus continue to be charged with the application of invisible laws.

Beginning in Rivers State, Onimim is identifying what customary laws exist and providing the tools for people to reference, use, and change these laws. She has developed a comprehensive research methodology that tests and verifies the law at multiple stages to ensure authenticity. It is designed so that the product is a creation of the communities it is intended to serve rather than be the research of one person. Upon completion of the documentation, she will work with groups who want to use it, advocate for its use at faculties of law, and enlist all the necessary players to spread her idea to the rest of Nigeria.
Onimim is recruiting a strategic team of assistants to help her implement her research model, which has three stages–design and data collection, dialogue and analysis, and verification and accountability. Recognizing that researchers who speak the appropriate languages and have the trust of the communities are critical to her success, she has approached local bar associations to identify lawyers from the various communities who might volunteer their time. She is also enlisting law and social science graduates to assist with this field work. The first stage of design and data collection, which will take about six months, involves case studies, interviews with key informants within communities, collection of customary court judgments, and a literature review. The researchers will talk to individuals, groups of elders, Councils of Chiefs, and traditional societies and associations. Because precedent often guides customary law usage, serving and retired customary court judges, registrars, and other court officers will also serve as key informants. Past customary court judgments will provide critical data.
Given the uncertain nature of the subject, Onimim has designed the other two phases of her research to insure accuracy and credibility. The dialogue and analysis phase will take an additional six months, during which Onimim and her team will analyze the results, take the findings back to the communities, facilitate discussions between neighboring communities and between communities and the relevant public sector institutions (e.g., the Ministry of Justice and the Law Reform Commission). They will attempt to build consensus among all stakeholders regarding the accuracy and completeness of the laws uncovered in the first phase. During the last stage of verification and accountability, Onimim will conduct workshops and media briefings to further spread and verify findings and produce the final reports and publications for dissemination.
With the intent that customary laws be brought to public knowledge to prevent continued manipulation by their custodians, the final compilation will be easily readable and publicly disseminated for maximum accessibility. Onimim knows that to codify the laws would be to make them more difficult to change. Her goal, therefore, is simply to make the laws visible and thus the judicial system fairer.
Documentation is only the first critical step to achieving this goal. In addition to making customary law documentation available for public scrutiny, Onimim also must inject this knowledge into the system itself. If lawyers and judges are to know and justly enforce customary laws, institutes of learning must study and teach them. She will lobby the faculties of law in Rivers and other states to begin to include customary law in their curriculum, and she plans to establish a customary law institute for ongoing study.
The documentation will also allow Onimim to advocate for legal reform and help others do the same. She will work with NGOs to use the study as a tool to advise clients and to support campaigns for human rights.
Finally, though Onimim is limiting her initial study to Rivers State, she wants other states to pursue a similar path. To facilitate this replication, she will conduct workshops with groups from other parts of the country, showcasing the initial study and its impact. She will take it to the Ministries of Justice in other states, encouraging them to use it as a template to carry out similar reviews. She hopes to involve others in doing comparative studies and plans to approach the National Law Reform Commission about conducting a nationwide customary law analysis.

Even as a youngster growing up in her village, Onimim recognized the confusion surrounding customary practices. An interest in law and social change began to take root as she often witnessed people being punished for breaking norms that they did not know existed.
As she pursued her law profession, Onimim spent significant time engaged in various social ventures. As president of the Old Students Association of Federal Government College, Port Harcourt, and member of the Governing Council of the school, she engineered a mentoring and counseling program for students. While practicing law in Port Harcourt between 1993 and 1997, she helped establish the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) legal clinic, which she ran on a pro bono basis. She and the other founders also started a scholarship fund for low-income and disabled students. More recently, Onimim had her father's old house converted into a free public reading room and library for the students of the village's two secondary schools. Last year, she and her family established the Care for Life Foundation, through which they provide healthcare, food, and other necessities to indigent elderly people in two villages in Rivers State.
The problems caused by the lack of customary law documentation arose several times during her professional endeavors. At the FIDA clinic, clients often needed advice on customary law issues that she and her peers were unequipped to provide. Between 1994 and 1996, Onimim served on the Caretaker Committee of her local government council, which struggled to settle disputes between communities resulting from the lack of written norms. The council often unwittingly ran afoul of laws and traditional institutions.
These experiences led her and three colleagues to found the Legal Research Institute (LRI), with the objective of reforming Nigerian laws to reflect fair, international standards. LRI's mission: "reform powered by research." To that end, she and her colleagues conduct research and advocate reform in several areas of the law. Recognizing that customary law presents a particular challenge in the legal field, she decided to create a solution.