ANTI COMMUNITARIAN CONSTRUCTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS PROVISIONS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN COMMONWEALTH AFRICA: RIPPLES FROM THE NIGERIAN CASE OF AGBAI V OKOGBUE

Abstract

In most countries of the world, socio-economic rights are now concrete and enforceable. In Nigeria however, chapter II of the 1999 Constitution has remained non-justiciable, irrespective of the adoption and ratification of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which contains replica of these socio-economic rights. In countries like South Africa, India and some Latin American countries, the socio-economic rights have been given full force of enforcement either by composite construction of constitutionally guaranteed rights to encapsulate socio-economic rights or by expansive interpretation of the Constitution by the courts. Enforcement of socio-economic rights has nonetheless remained a mirage in Nigeria. Successive governments have hidden under the non justiceability of chapter II of the constitution to evade accountability and responsibility especially in provision of life changing infrastructure. This has impelled communities to engineer their own social development via self-help. Enforcement of compliance towards these self-help measures usually clash with the perceived rights of individuals. This paper therefore raises concern on the construction of the rights provisions to stifle communitarian philosophy enhancing social development via communal self-help projects by revisiting the case of Agbai v. Okagbue. It is posited that with recent dwindling government responses especially in rural infrastructural development, the court has to re-engineer communal development by superimposing communal interest over personal interest especially where such communal interest will also further full realization of personal rights.