Babalola’s Law Dictionary of Judicially Defined Words and Phrases

Abstract

The fundamental thesis supporting the necessity of this book as expressed by its author in the preface is that ‘if wigs and robes are touted as symbols of neocolonialism and colonial inheritance, how much more our perennial fastening to the definitions under the English law when we can now, for whatever it is worth, boast that, the Nigerian law has come of age to have its own unnecessarily different but peculiar definition of words and phrases’. The author goes on to identify a small number of expressions that are peculiar to Nigeria and therefore would not be found in any other dictionaries of the law. But, as the author’s thesis suggests, those are in a sense irrelevant to the fundamental value proposition of the work. An expression that is found only in Nigeria will necessarily have a Nigerian definition; the primary importance of this work lies in providing the opportunity for Nigerian judges to shape the development of Nigerian law in accordance with local context and principle, through the development of a body of general definitions brought together in one place and therefore capable of cross-contextual construction.