C.O. Okonkwo states that customary practices become law when they are incorporated into the formal legal system, especially through judicial decisions.

Caveats

• The attribution to 'C.O. Okonkwo' as a named scholar rests entirely on an AI-generated knowledge base (labeled 'LLM Background Knowledge'), which is not independently verifiable and carries minimal evidentiary weight.
• The claim oversimplifies the relationship between judicial decisions and customary law: courts determine enforceability in formal proceedings, but customary norms may continue to operate as binding social rules within communities even when courts refuse enforcement.
• No high-authority source in the evidence pool independently confirms that a scholar named 'C.O. Okonkwo' authored 'An Introduction to Nigerian Law' or personally articulated this specific doctrine — the name 'Okonkwo' in the sources consistently refers to the case Okonkwo v. Okagbue or to Professor Theodore Okonkwo.