CHAPTER TWO

YORUBA LAND, ORIGIN, PEOPLES AND TRADITIONS.

2:1 Origin of the Yoruba People.

2:2 Yoruba Tradition and Culture.

2:3 The Political Structure and Stratification of Society.

2:4 Crime Detection Methods and control

2:5 Justice System, Penal Code and Punishments Methods.

End Notes and References.

The indigenous African people had their own ideas of right and wrong framed in a
sophisticated system and conception of law. To the African tribesman, law is a
well-known body of customary rules by which everyone regulates his conduct.
The African legal culture frowns at any improper behaviour viewed as capable of
being inimical to the legal norms and disrupting the social equilibrium. Deities,
shrines, ancestors, kinship, elders, age grade associations and the chiefs are some
of the indigenous mechanisms of crime control in nearly all African societies.
It is an acknowledged fact that what we know today as Alternative Dispute
Resolution (ADR), which stretches into the practice of Victim Offender Mediation
(VOM) is practically as old as man and has been used in most societies to resolve
disputes through their traditional mediating institutions or by the individuals
trying to reach a compromise by negotiation on their own.