THE LEGAL IMPLICATION OF PARTIES CONTRACTING STATUTORY MARRIAGE WHILE THEY ARE ALREADY MARRIED UNDER CUSTOMARY MARRIAGE: CONVERTION; CO-EXISTENCE AND ABEYANCE THEORIES.

INTRODUCTION It has become a common practice in Nigeria for parties who intend to contract a statutory marriage to marry first under customary law before the solemnization of the statutory marriage. This practice may be explained by the fact that though Western civilization and culture have permeated Nigerian society, most people, even the most sophisticated understandably regard themselves as bound by the customary law of their place of origin. The Nigerian Marriage Act has given validity to this practice by enabling who are married under Customary Law to marry each other under the statute. Some legal questions arise from this practice. It is uncertain whether the statutory marriage supersedes, for all intent and purposes, the previous customary-law marriage, or if the customary law marriage is merely put into abeyance to retrieve after the subsequent statutory marriage has come to an end. There is also the question of whether both marriages co-exist. The purpose of this project will be to examine all this questions and the position of such marriages and the associated problems in Nigeria. Marriage is the union of a man to a woman to the exclusion of all others; double-decker marriage means two validly permissible marriages contracted by the same persons under two different systems of law. Conversion theory: a marriage which is converted thereby losing its characteristics and nature to that which it is converted; Co-existence theory: two forms of marriage which their respective incidents co-exist.