Enhancing the Right to Education to NIgerian Strategic Legal Mechanisms

Nigeria is known to be the most populated nation in Africa, and the seventh most populous country in the world. It is also noted for having the highest number of out of school children in the world (13.2 million); a clear indication of its failure to respect the right to education enshrined in Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights of December 1948, and other Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) norms which provide for the foundations of a respectable quality of life. The necessities of life encompass, at-a minimum, the rights to adequate nutrition, housing, health, and also education, which is both a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realizing other human rights. In spite of Nigeria's commitment to international and regional instruments on ESC rights; and the recognition given to these issues in the Constitution, the same constitution only recognizes ESC rights as directives of state policy and does not accord them the status of fundamental human rights, while at the same time doing so in the case of Civil and Political rights guaranteed in its Chapter IV. Furthermore, Section 6 (6) (c) of the Constitution is to the effect that issues contained in the said Chapter II are not justiciable in the courts, except to the extent that they are rendered justiciable in statutes. Accordingly, the justiciability of ESC rights has been the topic of much academic and institutional debate generally, and the objections to the justiciability of ESC rights have, for a long time, effectively precluded many judicial institutions from protecting ESC rights and ensuring that victims of all human rights violations are guaranteed access to effective remedies. Recent jurisprudence however indicate that the tide seems to be changing with proactive laws, strategic litigation and judicial activism. It is in the light of the foregoing that this paper examines and analyses judicial reaction towards the right to education in Nigeria. The paper uses doctrinal method and content analysis of Nigerian statutes, case law, and relevant literature.