The Igbo concept of justice: Towards an understanding

Abstract

African society thrives and develops rapidly in the face of justice
and equity. This lays credence to why the concept of justice has a
focus in the life of the African man. Hence, it is seen as one of the
tools that aid in peaceful co-existence and societal development.
It is germane to observe that with modernization and
urbanization which has brought about a mixture in our various
cultures, justice has been losing its essence and predominance in
the African culture and has to be readdressed if the society must
be what it is ought to be. It is in view of this fact that this work
intends to spotlight and elucidate the concept of justice from the
African concept (Igbo) with the intent of explaining its place in
the society. In order to achieve the essence of this paper, this
work will be done using a sociological approach and the theory
of distributive justice. The paper finds reveals that justice has
been losing its meaning in the society and has to be re-examined
in order to understand its importance from the lens of the Igbo
society. It also observed that justice is an indisputable virtue if
our society must be peaceful and egalitarian. It therefore
concluded that since our society is made up of people with
different values, ideas and interest which made conflict to be
imminent, the place of justice cannot be overemphasized and
cannot be trashed to the base. The work therefore recommends
that Africans should strive to give way to justice since it will help
in the promotion of our common humanity. It also recommendsthat for our society to see the light of development, justice is a
veritable tool and should be embraced.