The Land Use Act, 1978 is, indeed, a “giant-killer”. In the recent case of Savannah Bank of Nigeria Limited and Another v. Ammel Ajilo and Another a learned Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria seized the opportunity to indict a doyen of the Nigerian Bar for a seeming misapprehension of the revolutionary effect of the Act on the land tenurial system of the country. But we hasten to point out that the Act is not the problem child only of the Bar, for the Bench is not free from the same misapprehension for which this learned gentleman of the Bar was indicted. Indeed, there is mounting evidence from the conflicting opinions of our courts on the Act that the latter is the “Achilles' heel” also of the Bench. One glaring instance: while the Supreme Court in recognition of group holdings under customary law conceded communal title to a right of occupancy under the Act to a community in the case of Chief S.U. Ojeme and Others v. His Highness Momodu II and Others the Court of Appeal expressed the contrary view in the subsequent case of L.S.D.P.C. and Others v.

Adultery is one of the cardinal sins in the Ten Commandments and, despite the modern apparently relaxed attitude towards sexual intercourse, it has remained one of the main reasons for marriage breakdowns. Its seriousness as a matrimonial offence is clearly reflected in the fact that originally it was the only permitted ground for divorce under English Law. Of particular gravity was adultery by a wife which was described as being unforgivable by a husband, for while a husband could divorce his wife on the sole basis of her adultery, a wife had to prove other material facts in addition to her husban's adultery in order to obtain a similar relief.

Even under customary law, adultery, particularly by a wife, was treated as a sin against the ancestral gods and required the performance of certain rituals to appease them and the husband and to cleanse the violated woman. Although pre-set grounds for divorce are non-existent and unnecessary at customary law, adultery may well be a vital reason why a man would want to divorce his wife. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act adultery, coupled with intolerability, is one of the listed grounds for divorce the proof of which is proof of “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage.

The object of this article is to examine the judicial concept of adultery, intolerability and damages for adultery.

The establishment in the Gold Coast of commercial agriculture based on a permanent cultivation of the soil, the development of the mining and timber industries in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the concession boom that these events carried in their train, created favourable conditions for capitalist development for which the private ownership of the means of production is a prerequisite. However, at that time the basic means of production in the Gold Coast, i.e. the land, was generally held in common and was not privately owned.

Colonialism, however, had the effect of establishing two systems of production in the country. The capitalist sector which became dominant was created at commercial and urban centres. The traditional communal system based on what, for want of a better term, one could call subsistence agriculture, remained at the periphery in the countryside. The dominant capitalist sector produced in its own image a class of property owners consisting of European, national and rural capitalists. Attempts by the latter to acquire lands to be privately owned gave rise to problems of insecurity of title. A machinery for land registration was thought to be the most adequate means of solving the problem.

Can a domestic tribunal or an administrative disciplinary committee try a person for a criminal offence? The answer is clearly no. But can such a tribunal, in the exercise of its disciplinary powers, try a person for misconduct even though the acts amounting to such misconduct are in the nature of criminal offences? The Nigerian Supreme Court has given a negative answer to this latter question. The aim of this short article is to show that the answer puts “ill-legal” constraints on the administrative disciplinary powers of such tribunals.

The history of the problem dates back to 1968. In Denloye v. Medical and Dental Practitioners' Disciplinary Tribunal, counsel for the plaintiff raised the issue of the competence of a disciplinary tribunal to try a person for acts alleged to amount to infamous conduct in a professional respect where the acts were in the nature of criminal offences. Although the court did not consider the issue, it nevertheless observed (in the typical fashion of regarding English law as a palimpsest of Nigerian law) that the practice under the English Medical Act, 1956 which was that allegations of unprofessional conduct in the nature of offences were not dealt with under the Act in the first instance but were left to the courts, and, after conviction, disciplinary actions would follow, was the intention in Nigeria.

This article will analyse the legislative provisions relating to financial maintenance for women and children in six countries of southern Africa: Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These are the six countries involved in the Women and Law in Southern Africa research project, a comparative research project and network of researchers in the region. For the first two-year phase of the project, 1990–1991, the project is studying maintenance laws, their application and administration, and the attitudes, customs and practices which influence maintenance law in the six countries. This article is a background paper for that project, which will by analysing legislative provisions give the researchers in the project an idea of some of the various options for law reform.

One of the fundamental principles underlying the Nigerian constitutional process is that of the independence of the judiciary. The concept, in its basic form, embodies the entire philosophy of constitutional democracy especially as emphasised by the preamble to the Constitution which is for “promoting the good government and welfare of all persons … on the principles of Equality, Freedom and Justice”. In a country such as Nigeria which is presently characterised by political and economic underdevelopment, it is generally considered constitutionally desirable that a viable contrivance such as the institutional separation of the judiciary from the other arms of the government is a necessary bulwark against all forms of political and social tyranny, administrative victimisation and oppression. In other words, the freedom of the judicature from any influence, whether exerted by the legislature or the executive, or even from the judiciary itself, which is capable of leading to any form of injustice, abuse, miscarriage of justice, judicial insensitivity or other court-related vices is a condition sine qua non for the establishment of a durable political order based on the rule of law and constitutionalism.

The notion of the independence of the judiciary has its philosophical ancestry in the time-honoured theory of the separation of powers, a doctrine which incidentally features prominently in the allocation of state powers under the Nigerian constitutional scheme.

This is not an article on the crime of infanticide as such. It is a footnote, as it were, to Schapera's writings on infanticide in Bechuanaland. The intention is not to go into the intricacies and controversies concerning the crime of infanticide. Nor does it suggest that Schapera ever devoted any substantial book or article to infanticide. Rather he referred in passing to instances of infanticide in various articles and books he wrote on Bechuanaland. He indicated that infanticide was practised in Bechuanaland under certain circumstances, as in any other society. However, it was obvious the exact extent of the practice was unknown because the practice was shrouded in secrecy. It was only when a case had been witnessed by a third party or had been reported to the authorities that the matter reared its head. As such the statistics on infanticide are hard to come by and even where they exist they are at best misleading. The note considers the instances referred to by Schapera and comments on a few available cases. It will emerge that these cases were only those which were prosecuted in the European courts. Infanticide took place broadly under the following circumstances: