Obiora Chinedu Okafor

On Legalism, Popular Agency and 'Voices of Suffering': The Nigerian National Human Rights Commission in Context

The set of standards for the evaluation of National Human Rights Commissions (NHCs) formulated and applied by the UN constitute the dominant conception of an ideal NHC. Virtually every scholar, nongovernmental organization, and governmental body that has commented on the effectiveness of NHCs shares this dominant UN-driven conception of the ideal NHC. However, this dominant conception is significantly limited, and requires fundamental enlargement and revision if the NHCs animated by its vision are to have a significantly increased transformative potential. A performance assessment study of the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission (using the more holistic vision of ideal NHC developed in this paper) shows that when linked adequately with NGOs, NHCs are indeed very useful resources for human rights promotion and protection.

Modest Harvests: On the Significant (But Limited) Impact of Human Rights NGOs on Legislative and Executive Behaviour in Nigeria

This article is devoted to the highly important task of mapping, contextualizing and highlighting the significance ofsome of the modest achievements that have been made by domestic human rights NGOs in Nigeria.! As limited as the development of these NGOs into much more popular (and therefore more influential) movements has tended to be, they have nonetheless been able to exert significant, albeit modest, influence within Nigeria.

Between Elite Interests and Pro-Poor Resistance: The Nigerian Courts and Labour-led Anti-Fuel Price Hike Struggles (1999-2007)

Between 1999 and 2007, a popular Labour-led movement led a pro-poor struggle to resist the fuel price hike policy of the Nigerian government. Waged in the context of the poverty in which nearly 70 per cent of Nigerians lived, the operation of powerful incentives to raise fuel prices, and Labours extraordinary socio-political leverage, these struggles triggered much government frustration. One of the strategies adopted by the government to legitimize its attempt to repress the movement was to resort to the courts. This article analyses, from a socio-legal perspective, the key cases relating to the validity of the governments attempts to repress the struggles. The article concludes that, although both pro- and anti-movement trends can be observed in the jurisprudence, the anti-movement tendency having so far prevailed in terms of formal legal precedent, the pro-movement (ie pro-poor) decisions have, as a result of their massive popular legitimacy, actually functioned as the “living law.”

Remarkable returns: the influence of a labour-led socio-economic rights movement on legislative reasoning, process and action in Nigeria, 1999–2007

During 1999–2007, a labour-led but broad-based socio-economic rights movement, which focused on a pro-poor (and therefore highly popular) anti-fuel price hike message, persuaded and/or pressured Nigeria’s federal legislature, the National Assembly, to : mediate between it and the Executive Branch of Government ; take it seriously enough to lobby it repeatedly ; re-orient its legislative processes ; explicitly oppose virtually all of the Executive Branch’s fuel price hikes ; and reject key anti-labour provisions in a government bill. Yet the movement did not always succeed in its efforts to influence the National Assembly. This article maps, discusses, contextualises and analyses these generally remarkable developments. It also argues that while many factors combined to facilitate or militate against the movement’s impact on legislative reasoning, process and action during the relevant period, this movement’s ‘ mass social movement ’ character was the pivotal factor that afforded it the necessary leverage to exert considerable, if limited, influence on the National Assembly.

Irrigating the famished fields: The impact of labour-led struggle on policy and action in Nigeria (1999–2007)

Abstract Between 1999 and 2007, a broad-based labour-led movement which focused most of its energies on its struggle against unpopular fuel price hikes in Nigeria was able to exert considerable, though limited, influence on an Obasanjo-led executive arm of government that was at best quasidemocratic in its orientation. This article argues that, despite the very important roles played by other factors (notably the presence of more democratic space in Nigeria post-1999), the movements adoption of a mass social movement approach facilitated its ability to exert such influence.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Accountability of Corrupt Foreign Actors in Nigeria

This article analyzes the record of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria with respect to the prosecution of the corrupt practices in Nigeria of foreign actors (individuals and corporations). The article seeks to extract from the analyses possibilities and implications for effective anti-corruption efforts in other parts of Africa.

Poverty, agency and resistance in the future of international law: an African perspective

Abstract This article enquires into the likely posture of future international law with respect to African peoples. It does so by focusing on three of the most important issues that have defined, and are likely to continue to define, international laws engagement with Africans. These are: the grinding poverty in which most Africans live, the question of agency in their historical search for dignity, and the extent to which these African peoples can effectively resist externally imposed frameworks and measures that have negative effects on their social, economic and political experience. International laws future posture in these respects is considered through an examination of concrete debates relating to agricultural subsidies, debt usury and relief therefrom, and the relocation of framework socioeconomic governance of almost every African state to external institutions. Insights about what the future holds for the effectiveness of Third World resistance are derived from a consideration of the broad lessons that can be learned from the successes or failures of some past Third World struggles.

Poverty in the Human Rights Jurisprudence of the Nigerian Appellate Courts (1999-2011)

The major objective of this article is to examine the extent to which the human rights jurisprudence of the Nigerian appellate courts has been sensitive and/or receptive to the socio-economic and political claims of Nigeria’s large population of the poor and marginalized. In particular, the article considers: the extent to which Nigerian human rights jurisprudence has either facilitated or hindered the efforts of the poor to ameliorate their own poverty; the kinds of conceptual apparatuses and analyses utilized by the Nigerian courts in examining the issues brought before it that concerned the specific conditions of the poor; and the key biases that are embedded in and shape Nigeria’s jurisprudential orientation. The line of cases analysed in the article indicate that the Nigerian appellate courts, as elsewhere, possess great capacity, for good or ill, to impact public policy in the field of poverty reduction.

Inventing Legal Combat: Pro-Poor 'Struggles' in the Human Rights Jurisprudence of the Nigerian Appellate Courts, 1999-2011

This article deals with the question whether the jurisprudence of Nigeria’s appellate courts has helped advance or impede the struggles of the poor to assert their human rights in the country. The article begins by defining, delimiting, and situating the concepts “struggle” and “human rights as struggle.” It then moves on to identify and discuss the factors that make the struggles that the poor and the subaltern must wage to realize their human rights a tough one. Following this discussion, the article turns its attention to its main focus, i.e., an analytical examination of the ways in which the corpus of human rights jurisprudence of the Nigerian appellate courts has either aided and/or inhibited the struggles of the poor and the subaltern in that country during the period under study. The latter discussion is sub-divided into two segments: the first is focused on the engagement of these courts with the pro-poor struggles of Nigerian Labour, while the second is devoted to an analysis of the attitude of the courts to other kinds of pro-poor human rights struggles in Nigeria. In both cases, given space and other constraints, only small but representative samples of the relevant cases are discussed.

Group Rights under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights:

It is particularly meet, on the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to re-examine the ways in which its group rights provisions has been interpreted and applied. What is the concept of group rights that animates the “peoples’ rights” provisions in the African Charter? How have these group rights been actually interpreted and applied in the jurisprudential praxis of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which (despite the establishment of the as yet young, and in any case, soon to be replaced African Court of Human Rights) remains to date its main interpretive body? And what are the future prospects of these provisions in that jurisprudence? These are the main questions that this chapter tackles through analytical examinations of the African Charter itself, the relevant primary and secondary literature, and the jurisprudence of the African Commission. To this end, section 2 examines the general debate regarding the concept of group rights and its place in international human rights praxis. Section 3 briefly considers the conception of group rights that animated the “peoples’ rights” provisions in the African Charter. In section 4, a fairly detailed examination of the jurisprudence of the African Commission with respect to each one of the major group rights provisions of the Charter is conducted. Following that tour d’ horizon, some brief more general closing thoughts on the future of group rights in the African Human Rights System are offered in section 5.