JUSTICE IN THE TRADITIONAL THOUGHT SYSTEM OF THE TIV PEOPLE
The discourse on the concept of justice has been one of the major preoccupations of social and political reflections from ancient times to this day. This is owing chiefly to the fact that justice is considered as a key virtue of socio-political organisation as well as an imperative for peaceful co-existence for any human society. It is in this sense that there is a seeming consensus among political thinkers as captured in John Rawls’s thoughts that every “human person possesses an inviolability founded on Justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override”1. This expresses our conviction on the primacy of justice and it implies that justice is not just the highest of values in the society but one in which none can be placed above it in the ordering of societal priorities. In this regard therefore, the rights and entitlements secured and guaranteed by justice are not subject to negotiation, political bargaining or the calculus of societal interests.2 As such, practically no human society is devoid of an idea of justice but this is without prejudice to different juridical methods adopted by different group of people and societies in ensuring justice. It is from this background that this paper intends to take a philosophical look at the concept of justice in the traditional thought system of the Tiv people of Central Nigeria. In doing so the paper has adopted historical and critical-evaluative methods of data analysis to lay bay the issue and historically situate the context of our discussion in juxtaposition to the contemporary reality and to critically evaluate the conceptualisation of justice in the traditional thought system of the Tiv people and its transformation in the present Age.
Keywords: justice, people, system, thought, tiv, traditional