HOW BRITISH LAW EDITED YORUBA INHERITANCE WITHOUT ABOLISHING IT, 1900-2026

For 400 years, Yoruba land inheritance was governed by Ori-O-Jori and Idi-Igi. This article argues that British colonial courts did not abolish these customs but edited them through the “repugnancy test,” creating a durable system of legal pluralism that continues to structure inheritance disputes in Southwest Nigeria in 2026. Drawing on doctrinal analysis of 34 colonial and post-colonial cases, 16 years of ethnographic fieldwork across 6 states from 2009-2025, and 23 interviews with traditional rulers, I show how this colonial edit produced three contemporary crises of constitutional conflict with Section 42 of the Constitution (1999), evidentiary failure under the Evidence Act (2011), and unregulated trusteeship by the Olori Ebi. Using Lewis v Bankole (1908) and Suberu v Sumonu (1956) as anchor cases, and building on Adewale (2015), the article demonstrates that contemporary reform efforts will fail unless they directly address and rewrite the 1900 colonial intervention. The article concludes that codification, not abolition, is the path to reconciling custom with constitutionalism. A model Yoruba Customary Inheritance Bill 2026 is proposed.