Customary Arbitration Practices Among the Ogoni: An Indigenous Approach to Conflict Resolution

Disputes are indispensible in human societies, generally, especially due to the fact of competing interests among individuals in these societies. Yet, there exists the ardent need for members of the society to co-exist harmoniously. Such harmonious setting can only be achieved where certain mechanisms are duly institutionalized for resolution of disputes arising from competing interests of individual members of the society. One of such mechanisms for dispute resolution especially within the traditional setting, it has been argued, is customary arbitration as against the tortuous recourse to litigation in the regular courts. This paper attempts to examine the practice of customary arbitration as a valid and respectable mechanism for dispute resolution in Nigeria, and particularly, in the traditional Ogoni society of Rivers State. The study uses both primary and secondary sources of data collection such as oral interviews conducted personally by the researcher, field experience and published works in the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, Law, religion, history and culture. It adopts as its theoretical framework, Ralf Dahrendorf’s Open Model which strikes a balance between the two extremes of the Consensus Model and the Conflict or Pluralist Model, as the most relevant approach consistent with the idea of dispute resolution and the achievement of societal harmony and equilibrium which are the cardinal objectives of traditional/customary arbitration. Although there are presently various windows of Alternative Dispute Resolution established in some states of Nigeria, yet there still exists the challenge of its non-adoption especially in those states that are yet to appreciate the establishment of multi-door Courts in their jurisdictions. The work therefore canvasses and further reifies the need for Nigeria to institutionalize this traditional mode of dispute settlement, especially in civil matters, due to its simplicity and informality