A. Multiple Influences Nigeria is a nation of some 150 million peoples most of whom draw their ancestry from about 250 indigenous ethnic groups. Each of these ethnic group have cultural norms that have evolved or inured and presently constitute the corpus of customary norms in Nigeria provided they had have satisfied certain standards. The peoples that presently constitute modern Nigeria, at some point in their history, had their domain collectively declared a colony by the government of Britain: a state of affairs that ended in 1960 with the emergence of the sovereign State of Nigeria. The interaction with Britain led to the initial adoption of several of the Laws of the British government for the emergent nation in 1960 pending the promulgation of locally made replacements for them. Indeed, one aspect of Nigeria’s sovereignty, the capacity to exercise supreme appellate judicial authority independent of the review of another Judicial authority answerable to a different Sovereign nation, was compromised as the nation’s courts were put under the appellate authority of the British Privy Council. However, in 1963, Nigeria’s legal order became fully independent and anchored within the Nigerian sovereignty. The framework for the exercise of its executive powers changed from the British Parliamentary model to a Presidential model, similar in several respects to the American system. Under the new system, the powers of the Nigerian State were spread within the interstices of a central government and 3 regional governments. The framework for the exercise of its legislative powers was also shared among the federal legislature and regional legislative centers while the supremacy of its judicial powers was fully assumed and vested in a Supreme Court established for the nation. Since then, the Nigeria legal order has evolved as to incorporate a bouquet of normative statements made by various military and civilian regimes that have led the country. From its commercial laws to its criminal codes, influences spanning the customs of its indigenous peoples, legal practices of other nations - ranging from the British, United States, European countries including the Scandinavian bloc, Asia, Oceania and even other African countries - could be discerned. For instance, the Criminal Code and the Matrimonial Causes Act are modeled after those of Queensland, Australia while the Penal Code (applicable in the North) is fashioned after the Sudanese Penal Code. Many of its statutes for the regulation of its banking and financial sector draw heavily from rules distilled from far flung places like the United States, Canada, South Africa, etc. Thus, it is difficult to ascertain the degree to which any of these foreign and indigenous influences, including the British common law system, may have exclusively impacted on the legal order of Nigeria, today. The picture that emerges is that of a truly distinctive Nigeria legal complex different, in many material respects, from that of any other country. Its more obvious features include
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 05:42:16 +0000
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