Impact of globalisation on domestic family law: multi-tiered marriage in Nigeria as a case study

ABSTRACT

The concept of globalisation is commonly discussed as an issue in international law. However, little attention is paid to its influence in domestic family law. As a result of the growing trend of globalisation, legal and cultural norms of the host culture and the foreign culture are fused, thereby, leading to cultural homogenisation or cultural hybridisation, depending on the level of accommodation of the foreign norm by the host norm. One of the areas where hybridisation or homogenisation of cultural and legal norms manifests, especially in African countries including Nigeria, is in the marriage system, particularly in the conclusion of marriage contracts. In Nigeria, one of the impacts of cultural hybridisation is the evolvement of multi-tiered marriage, where a couple combines marriages under the statute law, customary law and religious law, especially Islamic law. This paper is an exploratory study of how globalisation impacts on how and why multi-tiered marriage is contracted in contemporary Nigeria. The paper also briefly discusses how the combination of marriages as a response to globalisation affects the operation of family law rules in Nigeria as well as the rights of the parties involved, especially the women.

KEYWORDS:

• Legal pluralism
• plural marriage
• multi-tiered marriage
• globalisation
• homogenisation
• hybridisation
• Nigeria

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the editors and reviewers for carefully reading through the manuscript and giving insightful comments that have improved the output of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.