In this study, I use the town of Ogidi as a case study to examine how female-centric law in Igboland became eclipsed by male-centric colonial law oge ndi ocha chilu, during the time that the British ruled. I privilege indigenous knowledge as part of my methodological approach to write an Igbo history from Igbo perspectives. For this reason, I engage in frequent use of Igbo words, phrases, periodization, and proverbs to explain both change and continuity in Ogidi and Igboland over time. This dissertation is structured around three broad arguments. First, all forms of law that the people of Ogidi followed tupu ndi ocha bia (before the arrival of the British) were gendered female, as the Igbo earth goddess oversaw all legal pronouncements, judgments, and punishments, and as she designated women's councils to be judges of morality. Second, British colonial officials and their male Igbo collaborators restructured the legal system in Ogidi by imposing a male-centric law and by endowing men with novel, privileged positions of legislative and judicial authority. Third, the women of Ogidi did not simply accept the re-gendering of law that disenfranchised them and marginalized Igbo deities; rather, they attempted to reassert their judicial authority through various long-established practices that pre-dated the British arrival. While Igbo women's efforts to stop or reverse the male-centric takeover of the law were unsuccessful, the details of their protests against the colonial government and its collaborators represent evidence of the judicial authority that they had once wielded in their communities.
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