Keywords
Abstract
There has been a cacophonous clamour for the judicial
enforcement of socioeconomic rights in several regions of the world
including Nigeria. Socio-economic rights are enforceable and/or
justiciable in jurisdictions such as South Africa and India. In
Nigeria, however, the fundamental Objectives and Directive
Principles of State Policy contained in Chapter II of the
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as
amended), which in turn embodies detailed provisions on socioeconomic rights, remains non-justiciable. Nigeria has equally
ratified the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and
has incorporated same into her corpus juris with ample provisions
for socio-economic rights. The objective of this paper is to examine
socio-economic rights and the judicial process in the context of
advancing socio-economic rights to the status of legally
enforceable human rights in Nigeria, specifically through
constitutional amendment and the judiciary, by the courts taking
centre stage and shedding the garb of judicial conservatism.