From the earliest time, Ibibio society was not without her own rules and mores which by customs and usage, formed the basic laws that governed them. The Ibibio jurisprudence before the incursion of British modeled courts was governed by natural law. The British courts, predicated on economic benefits was a deviation from the Ibibio practice. The traditional modes of law making among the Ibibio before the coming of the British courts and the philosophy behind such law was distorted by the introduction of the British court system starting with the informal Courts of Equity. Using primary sources such as oral interviews/archival evidence and secondary sources, this work adopts historical narratives methodology. It sought to examine the gaps that existed and the challenges the British established courts encountered in dispute settlement standards, owing to her deference to the Ibibio traditional dispute mechanism. The work concludes that the establishment of British colonial court system in Ibibio land brought about a transition from the reservation of social equilibrium by the community as was practiced before the introduction of the court system, to the impersonal justice of the courts, which unsettled the indigenous jurisprudential balance. These gaps and challenges eventually necessitated the judicial reforms that the British court system experienced.

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