Yoruba law is fit for self-determination.

The ‘rule of law’ is usually included in the list of requirements for establishing a new nation. The Yoruba had their own law that the colonialists as well as the Nigeria constitution recognised as ‘customary law’. Indeed, the Yoruba law has its own modern caselaw already. The Yoruba adjudicative system developed over generations and over millennia. It is sufficiently robust to sustain the legal system of a new nation without supplementation from external sources.
 
The philosophy of Yoruba law was to guarantee personal freedom and to ensure social order. Inbuilt were the notions of fairness (Isototo), step-by-step approach to evidence gathering, confidentiality (Monumo), precedent (Isaju) and equality before the law (Bakanna). The focus of the Yoruba civil law was not to ‘punish’ or ‘compensate’ but to assuage a legal wrong. Legal wrongs were classified as dispute (Iyan), harm (Iya) or altercation (Ija). Adjudication was by arbitration (Ilaja), conciliation (Itona), mediation (Ibosarin) and negotiation (Igbiro).
 
There was a general acknowledgement by the Yoruba that it might not be possible to exactly right the wrong committed. The purpose of justice was to enable the victim to ‘move on’. In the Yoruba civil law, the victim could proffer the solution that was most palatable to him and the perpetrator could proffer the solution that he believed could right the wrong that he had done. The advantages were a system that was proximate, swift and participatory. Support the Yoruba: sign, spread, donate, share, retweet http://chng.it/QJp8yJ6hPs Target: 100,000 signatures. Signatures cost nothing! And you don’t even have to be Yoruba to sign!