Professor Dauda Ojobi Books Direct

His primary audience remains academics (law, political science, African studies), legal practitioners, judges, and policy advisors. But his work on ethics and corruption has found a secondary readership among journalists and civil society activists. No profile would be complete without noting the critiques. Some scholars argue that Ojobi over-romanticizes customary law, glossing over its patriarchal and exclusionary elements. Others say his proposed hybrid systems are administratively impractical in under-resourced states.

The book offers no easy solutions, but provides a diagnostic toolkit that has been adopted by anti-corruption agencies in Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria’s ICPC. Perhaps his most practical work. Based on fifteen years of field research across Benue, Plateau, and Ogun states, this book documents how formal land titles and indigenous tenure systems clash in the courts. Ojobi argues for a hybrid land registry that records both statutory deeds and customary allocations. professor dauda ojobi books

The book’s final essay, "Can a Judge Be a Patriot?" , sparked a heated debate at the 2022 Nigerian Bar Association conference. Ojobi’s answer is provocative: "Yes, but only if their first loyalty is to the constitution, not the president who appointed them." A departure from his solo works, this is a practitioner’s handbook. Dense, technical, and exhaustive, it has quickly become the go-to reference for litigation lawyers in Lagos and Abuja. Its novelty lies in the inclusion of "digital evidence in customary settings" —a chapter on how texts, WhatsApp messages, and call records can be authenticated within traditional dispute resolution frameworks. Style and Readership Ojobi is not a writer for casual beach reading. His prose is precise, sometimes dense, but never ornamental. He writes like a judge delivering a considered ruling—every sentence carries weight. However, he has an unexpected gift for the memorable metaphor. Corruption is "a river that drowns the fisherman and the fish alike." A weak judiciary is "a fence made of rain." Perhaps his most practical work

His books are not mere collections of statutes or abstract theories. They are interventions. 1. Jurisprudence and the Nigerian Experience (2008) Arguably his magnum opus, this book has gone through four revised editions. It moves beyond the usual Western jurisprudential anchors—Hart, Dworkin, Austin—and introduces what Ojobi calls "customary positivism" : a framework where customary law is given equal evidentiary and moral weight as statutory law. "A judge who does not understand the cosmology of the community he serves," Ojobi writes, "is merely a colonial clerk with a wig." The book is standard reading for law students at the University of Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo University, and the Nigerian Law School. 2. Ethics, Corruption, and the African Public Sphere (2013) This text moved Ojobi from legal circles into the broader social sciences. It examines corruption not just as a failure of enforcement, but as a systemic moral disorientation. His chapter on "The Gift That Eats the Future" —an analysis of prebendalism as a distorted extension of communal reciprocity—is widely cited in political science journals. " Ojobi writes

There is also the quiet contradiction of his career: a fierce critic of judicial dependence, yet he has served as a consultant to three state governors and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). He defends this as "reform from within, not exile." For the general reader interested in African governance and ethics: Begin with Ethics, Corruption, and the African Public Sphere (2013). It is his most accessible and urgently relevant work.