JUSTICE DRIVERS: THE SOCIO-COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS OF YORUBA INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE

Justice is a widely attested sacrosanct lifeblood of every human society which requires fair-play and impartial judgment and is often represented by a woman holding a balanced pair of scales in one hand and bearing a sword in the other, symbolising carefully weighed evidence and protection of the innocent, as well as punishment for the guilty; at times, justice is blindfolded, indicating impartiality. Though universal, justice is driven differently in different societies, as it is a derivative of the culture and tradition of the people with, often, a blend of some foreign touch, establishing its universality – universal justice – a source of which is expected to be divine or supreme, attesting to a human inborn tendency. If justice is divine, then the source of true justice transcends humans, which translates into the fact that all human societies draw principles from this higher source and apply the principles so drawn in line with the peculiarities of their culture and tradition. Hence, the extent to which justice is manifest or practiced in any society is contingent on how close or far away the society is to applying the divine justice. Since no human society has been able to abide by these principles perfectly, humans can attain no perfect justice. A discussion of perfect justice, as exemplified by a particular society and thus expected to be imitated by another, is beyond the scope of this paper. This paper investigates what drives justice and how justice is driven among the Yoruba. This paper argues that the Yoruba exploit the socio-communicative value of taboos, proverbs and àrokò to sustain justice in the society. The paper presents the issue through the frame of the principle of shared knowledge and socio-cultural competence