Socio-Economic Rights As Fundamental Rights: An Examination of the African Charter and the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules of 2009

Abstract

The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) makes ample provisions for social, economic, and cultural rights (socio-economic rights) in its Chapter II, which is an innovation inherited from the 1979 Constitution. Since these positive human rights were introduced into Nigerian jurisprudence, there have been raging debates about their status vis-à-vis the fundamental human rights in Chapter IV of the Constitution, considered as first generation rights. Some have argued that socio-economic rights are merely directive principles to guide the state in policy formulation and budgeting, and that their provisions are subject to availability of resources, but others insist that they are necessary rights that are at par with the fundamental rights without which the latter lose their meaning and efficacy. This paper examines these debates against the backdrop of the domestication of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (the African Charter) and the enactment of the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules (FREP Rules) of 2009, and interrogates how these two legal frameworks have impacted the status of socio-economic rights in the hierarchy of human rights. The paper adopts the doctrinal method of research by examining the opinion of authors, statutes and case laws and will argue that the domestication of the African Charter and the FREP Rules have changed the dynamics of the debate on the status and importance of socio-economic rights thereby making these second generation rights enforceable in Nigeria.