Harmful Traditional Practices, Laws, and Reproductive Rights of Women in Nigeria

There are many traditional practices in Nigeria that literally affect women's reproductive rights within and without marriages ranging from genital mutilation, harmful traditional practices to control women, early girl marriage, one sided divorce rights in Islamic marriage to men alone, nutritional taboos and other uncouth pregnancy related practices, to unfavorably widowhood practices and inheritance. This chapter intends to bring to the fore these traditional practices which impede the women's reproductive rights in Nigeria with emphasis on the study of the role of law as a therapeutic agent within the therapeutic jurisprudential context. This is done with a view to calling on the Nigerian government to wake up to its responsibility by enacting local laws specifically on women's rights generally or domesticating the various international instruments which the country had so far voluntarily ratified on women's reproductive rights.