Nigeria - Law guide

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This is an overview of an internet research on legislation in Nigeria (as of January 2024). This overview aims to facilitate the research into legal texts. However, it should not replace independent verification of the different legal texts as to their currency, validity, and accuracy.

Researching Laws

An extensive collection of Nigerian laws is available at the website of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, a Nigerian non-profit organisation:

Further collections of Nigerian legal texts are available under the following links:

The Refworld database, operated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), provides the option to search for English translations of some legislative texts:

Some Nigerian legal texts can be found on Natlex, a database operated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO):

To access the collection of national laws for Nigeria on ecoi.net, please follow this link.

Constitution

Globalex, an online publication of the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University School of Law, writes in an entry on Nigerian law last updated in July/August 2020 that the Nigerian constitution provides a framework for the administration of the Federal Government of Nigeria and the federal states. No federal state can therefore adopt its own constitution. The Constitution “is supreme” and its provisions are binding on all authorities and individuals in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The 1999 Constitution came into force on 29 May 1999 (Globalex, last updated July/August 20020).

Since it came into force, the Constitution has been amended five times – in 2010, 2018 and 2023 (Punch, 12 April 2023).

The first three amendments (the First, Second, and Third Alteration Act) have been signed into law by the president on 10 January and 4 March 2011, respectively (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, with First, Second and Third Alterations, pp. 173-209). The amendments related, among other things, to the national election commission INEC, to the competence of the Supreme Court regarding certain kinds of appeals, as well as to the status and jurisdiction of the National Industrial Court (Shamsu, December 2019, pp. 61-63).

At the end of May and in June 2018, respectively, in the context of the fourth constitutional alterations, President Buhari signed five more changes to the Constitution into law (Punch, 12 April 2023; PLAC, undated). Other proposed constitutional amendments were either vetoed by the President (PLAC, undated) or they failed to receive the approval of both chambers of the National Assembly (PLAC, undated; Shamsu, December 2019, p. 65).

More detailed information regarding the substance/content of the first four constitutional alterations can be found in an article by Yahaya Shamsu, a research fellow at the Nigerian National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) of December 2019 (Shamsu, Dezember 2019, pp. 60-67).

In March 2023, President Buhari signed 16 further laws on constitutional amendments. In total, 35 laws had been sent to the President for approval, however, the remaining 19 laws were not signed by the president (Punch, 12 April 2023; Olaniwun Ajayi LP, April 2023, p. 1).

The 16 laws signed by the President covered topics such as the transfer of competencies from federal to state level (Acts No. 15-17), governance issues (Acts No. 6, 8, 23, 34), judicial matters (Acts No. 9, 10, 12) and changes to the names of Local Government Areas (LGAs) as well as the correction of an error regarding the definition of the boundary of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja (Law No. 32) (Olaniwun Ajayi LP, April 2023, pp. 2-6, as well as the respective Acts).

In June 2023, the newly elected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed a bill presented by the outgoing National Assembly to amend the Constitution to harmonise the retirement age and pension rights of judges of the lower courts with those of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court (Premium Times, 8 June 2023):

The full text of the Constitution of Nigeria of 1999 with all amendments up to and including June 2023, is available under the following link:

Links to the individual constitutional amendments are available in Annex 1 at the end of this document.

Citizenship Law

The Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative, an informal network of organisations, individuals and experts concerned with the right to citizenship, writes in an undated country profile on Nigeria that citizenship in Nigeria is regulated in Chapter III of the 1999 Constitution (see also Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999; including all amendments until June 2023). Since the citizenship laws of 1960 and 1961 were repealed in 1974, no implementing legislation has been passed (Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative, undated). As recently as December 2018, participants in a workshop organised by the #IBelong Campaign, launched by UNHCR, called for the adoption of a nationality and citizenship law (UNHCR, January 2019). UNHCR reports in December 2022 that the government has presented a National Action Plan to Eradicate Statelessness and established a National Steering Committee tasked with managing its implementation (UNHCR, 6 December 2022, p. 5; see also Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative, 2 September 2022). Nigerian citizenship can be acquired by birth, registration and naturalisation (Denton, undated); dual citizenship is allowed under certain conditions (Dual Citizenship Report, undated).

Criminal Law

In her doctoral thesis on Nigeria's criminal justice system at the North-West University, Alaba Ibironke Kekere writes that Nigeria's current criminal justice system is a consequence of colonial rule. In 1904, a new Criminal Code was introduced by the British colonial administration in the then Northern Protectorate, the application of which was extended to the entire territory after the Northern Protectorate was merged with the Southern Protectorate. However, this Criminal Code did not override existing customary criminal law, which resulted in a dual criminal law system that led to numerous conflicts. In 1960, a separate criminal law, the Penal Code, and a separate Code of Criminal Procedure were introduced for the north of Nigeria. The Criminal Code continues to apply in the southern federal states, while the Penal Code is applied in the Northern states (Kekere, 2020, pp. 5-7). The Criminal Code is applied as federal law or state law, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. The same applies for the Penal Code of 1960 (Nwauche, 2014, section 2). Whether it is federal or state law depends on how the respective offence relates to the legislative powers regulated in the Constitution. These competences are regulated in Annex 2 of the Constitution, where Part I contains a list of exclusive federal competences (Exclusive Legislative List) and Part II contains a list of competences in which the Federation and the states cooperate (Concurrent Legislative List). The legislators of the federal states can enact laws on all other matters (Nwauche, 2014, section 2; see also Library of Congress, February 2017, section V.A.; Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, with all amendments up to and including June 2023, Second Schedule).

In 1999, the northern state of Zamfara was the first to introduce Sharia law and extend it to criminal matters, whereas until then criminal trials had been held before a customary or a conventional court and certain forms of punishment, such as amputation, had been banned (USCIRF, December 2019, p. 8). Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes in September 2004 that the “Shari’a Establishment Law” was introduced in Zamafra State on 27 October 1999 and entered into force on 27 January 2000. Until 2002, twelve federal states incorporated “some form” of Sharia law into their criminal legislation, including Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, and Zamfara (HRW, 21 September 2004, section IV; see also USCIRF, December 2019, p. 8; Ostien & Dekker, 2010, p. 575).

The legal experts Philip Ostien (University of Jos) and Albert Dekker (University of Leiden) explain in a book chapter in 2010 that in the southern states of Nigeria, the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure from the colonial era, derived from English law, are applied, while in the northern states, the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure from 1960 - with various amendments by the states - are in force. In addition to the Penal Code and the 1960 Code of Criminal Procedure, the "Sharia states" now also have a Sharia-based criminal law (Sharia Penal Code) and a Sharia Code of Criminal Procedure. The laws of 1960 are applied in the Magistrate's Courts and High Courts, the Sharia laws in the Sharia Courts, according to Ostien and Dekker (Ostien & Dekker, 2010, p. 589).

Gunnar J. Weimann from the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University writes in his 2010 doctoral thesis on Islamic criminal law in the northern states of Nigeria that with Nigerian independence on 1 October 1960, the application of Islamic criminal law in the then existing "Northern Region" was abolished and criminal matters in the 19 successor federal states were tried according to the Penal Code of 1959 (a basically English law with some special provisions based on Islamic criminal law). Weimann explains that after the introduction of the Penal Code of 1959, Islamic law continued to be applied in uncodified form, but only in civil law cases (Weimann, 15 December 2010, p. 89).

The ”Penal Code (Northern States) Federal Provisions Act” of 30 September 1960 was created as an act to supplement the “Penal Code of the Northern States” (also Penal Code Law, 1959) in relation to matters that fall exclusively within federal jurisdiction (Penal Code (Northern States) Federal Provisions Act, 30 September 1960, see, in particular, Article 3 to explain the relationship between the laws).

Weimann notes that, according to the 1999 Constitution, the federal states enjoy a considerable degree of freedom in organising the administration of justice in their territory. They have the authority to pass laws on criminal matters. The Constitution also explicitly provides for the creation of an Islamic judiciary. Moreover, Weimann explains, the Constitution (in particular, Section 277(1)) has already been interpreted in such a way that the Sharia courts of appeal of the khave jurisdiction not only in matters relating to Islamic personal law but also in matters relating to Islamic criminal law (Weimann, 15 December 2010, pp. 90-91).

Ostien and Dekker note that there are considerable differences between the various Sharia Penal Codes (Ostien & Dekker, 2010, p. 590). Weinmann also describes the different ways in which Sharia law has been introduced in the northern states and that Islamic criminal legislation therefore differs “in form and substance” in the various states. He continues to explain that the majority of the laws are based on the Sharia penal code of Zamfara State. Kano State has passed its own law, while Niger State has included provisions of Islamic criminal law into the existing Penal Code. The situation is similar with regard to Sharia criminal procedure codes, according to Weimann (Weimann, 15 December 2010, p. 94).

Soon after the introduction of Islamic criminal legislation, the governors in the states concerned set about reforming it, according to Weimann. The twelve states with Sharia legislation commissioned the Centre for Islamic Legal Studies (CILS) (at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria) to draft a "harmonised Sharia penal code" and financed it. This harmonised law should then have been adopted by all twelve federal states and thus replace the various Sharia criminal laws currently in use (Weimann, 15 December 2010, p. 94; see also USCIRF, December 2019, p. 39). So far, only one federal state, Zamfara, has adopted the harmonised Sharia penal code (USCIRF, December 2019, p. 39), namely in November 2005 (Weinmann, 15 December 2010, p. 94).

Abdulwahab Danladi Shittu mentions in an academic paper from 2015 that seven states (Zamfara, Kano, Bauchi, Sokoto, Jigawa, Yobe, Kebbi) have passed a codified law for the implementation of Sharia law and that five of these states (Sokoto, Yobe, Kebbi, Jigawa and Bauchi) have passed the Sharia penal code of Zamfara. The criminal law of Kano State deviates in some provisions (Shittu, 2015, p. 105). In an anthology published by Philip Ostien on the implementation of Sharia law in northern Nigeria in 2007, precise dates are given for the entry into force of individual Sharia criminal laws (see Ostien, 2007, p. 33).

According to the HRW report of September 2004, there is still confusion about which legislation is in force in the northern states, including among judges, academics and others who are considered Sharia experts. In any case, there is overlap between the Penal Code of 1960 of the northern states and the Sharia laws, as the Penal Code contains elements of Islamic law and has provided the basis for entire sections of the Sharia penal code (HRW, 21 September 2004, section IV).

In general, according to Weimann, the individual Sharia penal codes provide for criminal offences and punishments and apply to all Muslims as well as to those non-Muslims who voluntarily consent to have their case tried by a Sharia court. This implies that the cases of non-Muslims who do not consent continue to be tried under the Penal Code (Weimann, 15 December 2010, p. 95; see also USDOS, 15 May 2023, section II). According to Weimann, the Sharia penal codes were drafted hastily, which explains the poor legal quality of the laws and inadequate, sometimes incomprehensible wording, incorrect cross-references, gaps and contradictions (Weimann, 15 December 2010, p. 95; see also USCIRF, December 2019, p. 39).

The Criminal Code Act and the Penal Code (Northern States) Federal Provisions Act can be found under the following links:

A collection of documents regarding the implementation of Sharia law in the twelve northern states is available under the following link:

Criminal Procedure Law

In the southern states of Nigeria, criminal procedure statutes from the colonial era, derived from English law, are applied, according to Philip Ostien and Albert Dekker in the above-mentioned book chapter of 2010. In the northern states, the Criminal Procedure Code of 1960 is still in force, with various amendments by the states. In addition to the Criminal Procedure Codes of 1960, the Sharia states also have Sharia-based Criminal Procedure Codes. Ostien and Dekker explain that the 1960 codes are applied in the Magistrate's Courts and High Courts, while the Sharia laws are applied in the Sharia Courts (Ostien & Dekker, 2010, p. 589).

Eight states have adopted independent Sharia criminal procedure codes, as Weimann explains in his thesis of December 2010. Katsina and Yobe states continue applying the Criminal Procedure Code of 1959 while Kano and Borno states included a chapter on trials by Sharia courts to the 1959 Criminal Procedure Code (Weimann, 15 December 2010, p. 94).

The Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), adopted in May 2015, regulates the administration of criminal justice and related matters and is applicable in the Federal Capital Territory ("FCT"), in all federal courts in the country and in relation to offences contained in federal legislation (Egbegi, 10 November 2020). The ACJA includes provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act (CPA), which is applicable in the southern states and of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), which is applied in the northern states. It preserves the existing legislation but supplements it with new provisions aimed at increasing the efficiency of the justice system and closing existing legal gaps. The ACJA does not apply to Court Martial (Kekere, April 2020, pp.263-264). Mariam A. Abdulraheem-Mustapha of the Faculty of Law, University of Ilorin, explains in a 2018 article that the scope of the ACJA is broader than that of the CPA or CPC and covers the entire criminal procedure, from arrest to sentencing guidelines. However, as mentioned above, the ACJA is only directly applicable to federal courts and in the Federal Capital Territory. It can only become binding in the respective federal states if it is either adopted by a simple majority of all states or if the interested states adopt their own version of the ACJA with or without reference to the federal law (Abdulraheem-Mustapha, 2018, pp. 18-20).

The Guardian Nigeria writes in December 2023 that 33 federal states „have domesticated the ACJA“) (The Guardian Nigeria, 11 December 2023). The Nigeria Lawyer has reported earlier, in April 2022, that the federal states of Borno, Niger and Zamfara have not yet implemented the ACJA (The Nigeria Lawyer, 19 April 2022).

Der Administration of Criminal Justice Act von 2015 is available under the following link:

  • Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, signed by the President on 13 May 2015 (available at Internet Archive)
    https://web.archive.org/web/20230809223040/https://placng.org/i/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Administration-of-Criminal-Justice-Act-2015-2.pdf

Der Criminal Procedure Act and the Criminal Procedure Code can be found under the following links:

Sources

(All sources accessed on 23 January 2024)

Annex 1

The legal texts on the first three constitutional alterations (First, Second and Third Alteration Act) of 2010 can be found under the following link (at the end of the document, pp. 173-209):

  • Federal Ministry of Justice, Abuja: Constitution Of The Federal Republic Of Nigeria, 1999, entered into force on 29 May 1999; Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (First Alteration) Act, 2010, signed by the President on 10 January 2011, published on 11 January 2011; Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Second Alteration) Act, 2010, signed by the President on 10 January 2011, published on 12 January 2011; Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Third Alteration) Act, 2010, signed by the President on 4 March 2011, published on 7 March 2011,date according to document properties 15 October 2014 (available at Refworld)
    https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/44e344fa4.pdf

The legal texts of the five constitutional amendments that came into force in 2018 can be found under the following links:

The legal texts of the constitutional amendments that came into force in March 2023 can be found under the following links:

The text of the constitutional amendment made in June 2023 can be found at the following link:

Cite as:

ACCORD - Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation: ecoi.net Nigeria Law Guide, Janaury 2024
https://www.ecoi.net/en/countries/nigeria/law-guide/

  • Austrian Red Cross
  • Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation (ACCORD)

ecoi.net is run by the Austrian Red Cross (department ACCORD) in cooperation with Informationsverbund Asyl & Migration. ecoi.net is funded by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, the Austrian Ministry of the Interior and Caritas Austria. ecoi.net is supported by ECRE & UNHCR.