Symposium Posts

Nigeria continues to play a leadership role in its engagement with international law at the global, continental and regional levels. Having ratified and acceded to numerous international law treaties and instruments, and further domesticating many of them, the question to be asked is whether these instruments continue to have any tangible impact on the development of law in Nigeria? The purpose of this short commentary is not to rehash what has already been written but as indicated already, to comment on the current impact of international law on the Nigerian state and legal system. Against the backdrop of the ongoing war on terrorism, this contribution intends to assess if international law, and the principles emanating therefrom, are of any relevance in the current state of insecurity in Nigeria.

This essay argues that a correlation exists between Africa’s colonial history and its money laundering occurrences. Yet the global standards adopted to combat this crime do not consider the country’s peculiarities, a catalyst for unintended consequences. This argument is presented in three parts. The first part centers its discussion on the impact of Nigeria’s colonial history on money laundering and the regulation thereof. The second part focuses on the compliance trajectory of Nigeria and argues that the absence of a truly global framework hinders proactive compliance. The final part postulates that Nigeria has differing options to sustain a robust fight against ML/TF and concludes that a suitable outcome warrants the alignment of internal realities with the global standards.

The foregoing analysis is analogous to the Nigerian situation where transnational litigation has been utilised by a plethora of stakeholders including local communities, civil society organisations (CSOs) and victims of environmental injustice arising from the activities of oil MNCs in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. CSOs in Nigeria have adopted litigation as a deliberate strategy in influencing the activities of government and MNCs in the oil and gas sector.

In this brief writeup, I contemplate Nigeria’s role in shaping pan-African ideals at the national, sub-regional, regional, continental and global levels. I suggest that Nigeria’s role in shaping pan-Africanism is evident when viewed through the prism of its afro-centric foreign policy agenda as well as its domestic policy of reasonable accommodation of nationals of other African countries. I also suggest that Nigeria’s leadership role in Africa is one that comes naturally to it as the most populous country on the African continent and one of its largest economies.

This blog focuses on the legal and institutional framework for Marine Renewable Energy development in Nigeria. The blog examines Nigeria’s MRE potentials and how their maximization will assist Nigeria meet her climate change mitigation obligation under international climate regime. It further examines the possible impacts of exploring MRE sources in Nigeria and how this venture may co-exist with already existing uses of the sea and natural oceanic environment so as not to entirely alter the bio-diversity of the marine environment. It also examines emerging issues with MRE development in Nigeria. Finally, it makes suggestions on how Nigeria can develop an MRE legal framework that can balance all the competing interests.

It is accepted that legal doctrine is a normative discipline, which is not only describing and systematising norms, but also predominantly a discipline which takes normative positions and makes choices among values and interests. Consequently, the quest to find “better law” by adopting certain interpretative or normative positions often leads to elements external to law and legal doctrine such as philosophy, morals, history, sociology, economy, and politics. Hence, looking for better law involves empirical research particularly as better, in the context of this post, refers to a historical and sociological perspective on the balancing of the Eurocentric make-up of international law. Thus, the teaching of precolonial African trade usages should be explicitly embedded into the public international law (and international trade law) curriculum in Nigerian universities. This has already been done in international relations programmes in some Nigerian universities.

In this article, I challenge this dominant narrative on the purpose of copyright law in Nigeria not because it is wrong, but because it has eclipsed the fundamental purpose of copyright law, which essentially is an attempt to balance the interests of the creators’ desire for financial reward and the users’ access to creative works to encourage the creation and dissemination of cultural works for societal benefit. In other words, the purpose of copyright law is to fairly manage the rights of the creator to earn rewards for his creativity and the right of the users to access information. I critique the understanding of the purpose of copyright law in Nigeria and whether the understanding of the underlying rationale for copyright law in Nigeria aligns with the purpose enshrined in the first copyright law (the Statute of Anne) enacted over three centuries ago. As the first copyright law, it necessarily implies that all other copyright legislation, including the current copyright law in Nigeria trace their legislative ancestry to the Statute of Anne.

This blog reflects on recent efforts for international investment agreements (IIAs) to extend human rights and sustainable development obligations to foreign investors. Prior to the recent adoption of the Nigeria-Morocco BIT in 2016, human rights language and foreign investor obligations were notably absent in Nigeria’s IIAs. This discrepancy - between attempts to attract foreign investment through IIAs and the failure to link these investments to socio-economic priorities in Nigeria – has led to palpable tensions within Nigeria’s dominant economic sector, oil production, but recent international law developments suggest a slow shift is happening.

Nigeria’s role in shaping international intellectual property law deserves more scholarly attention. That is not to say that Nigeria’s role in this regard has not been acknowledged in the existing literature. For instance, Nigeria’s role as part of the state actors from developing countries that opposed the inclusion of intellectual property into the Uruguay Round that led to the creation of the WTO is well documented. Nevertheless, Nigeria’s role in other fora and venues where issues relating to international intellectual property law are being negotiated and discussed deserves more attention. In this regard, this blog post will focus on Nigeria’s role in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Due to constraints of space, it is not possible to provide an exhaustive examination of Nigeria’s contributions to WIPO’s work. The focus here will solely be on Nigeria’s role within the context of the work of WIPO’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP). The CDIP was established in 2008 after the adoption of WIPO’s Development Agenda in 2007 (more about this below). Specifically, this post will highlight the role played by Nigeria in securing the inclusion of an agenda item on ‘Intellectual Property and Development’ at CDIP.

There is renewed interest in the Nigeria- Sao Tome and Principle (STP) Joint Development Zone (JDZ). This is explored in a published chapter in the Nigerian Yearbook of International law (with co-authors). This chapter focused on the Nigeria-STP JDZ as an exemplar of a cooperative approach to maritime boundary delimitation and assesses the suitability of the particular JDZ model chosen. Therefore, this appears to be an excellent opportunity to explore the broader theme of maritime boundary zones of Nigerian vis-à-vis international maritime law. This essay argues that joint development in the spirit of a duty to cooperate within the Gulf of Guinea, will represent a Pan-African and sustainable vision, for the future exploration and exploitation of natural resources, including living resources such as Fisheries.