ENFORCEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS: AN APPRAISAL OF NIGERIAN JUDICIAL ATTITUDES

The constitutional guarantee of fundamental rights in Nigeria has, since 1999, been accompanied by a procedural architecture, the Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules 2009, designed to make redress accessible, expeditious, and substantively meaningful. This article examines how that architecture actually functions, tracing the historical evolution of rights enforcement in Nigeria, its constitutional and procedural mechanisms, the remedies available to a successful applicant, and, centrally, the attitude of Nigerian courts to the vindication of these rights. Drawing on recent appellate, Supreme Court, and ECOWAS Community Court authority, including the Supreme Court's landmark resolution of the joint applications controversy in Total Exploration & Production (NIG) Ltd v Okwu & Ors (2024) LPELR-62623(SC) and the ECOWAS Court's unpaid awards to Agba Jalingo and Glory Okolie, the article argues that Nigerian judicial attitudes to rights enforcement are incrementally progressive but unevenly applied, and that the domestic gains are increasingly undermined by the executive's persistent non-compliance with regional judgments. The article closes with an institutionally differentiated reform agenda addressed to the National Assembly, the Chief Justice, the superior courts, and the executive.