Practising law in Nigeria today requires not just knowledge of statutes and case law, but also faith, fasting, and perhaps a crystal ball. Advising clients has become a hazardous exercise, largely because judicial precedents—once the lawyer’s compass—now seem to suffer from chronic identity crises.
Judicial precedent, in theory, means that judges follow earlier decided cases where the facts are sufficiently similar. It is anchored on the venerable doctrine of stare decisis—Latin for “stand by what has been decided,” not “stand by whatever mood you’re in today.” The idea is simple: lower courts follow higher courts, and everyone enjoys certainty, consistency, and predictability. Civilisation, basically.
Traditionally, courts—including the High Courts, the Court of Appeal, and even the Supreme Court—are bound by their previous decisions, except where such decisions are overruled or declared per incuriam. England, from whom we borrowed our legal system (and the wigs), once took this very seriously. The House of Lords bound itself to its own decisions until 1966, when Lord Gardiner LC issued the famous Practice Statement, politely saying, “We will usually follow ourselves—unless it seems really wrong to do so.” Even then, departures were rare and treated like nuclear options.
Nigeria adopted the same principle. The certainty of precedent allowed lawyers to advise clients with some confidence and to file processes based on settled law. You could look at the authorities, nod wisely, and say, “This is the law.” Happy days.
Fast-forward to today, and our courts appear to treat previous decisions as optional reading—useful for background, but by no means binding. Identical facts now produce wildly different outcomes. The same legal issue can be upheld on Monday, overturned on Wednesday, and distinguished into irrelevance by Friday.
Nigerian lawyers now operate in a jurisprudential fog. What do you tell a client when the law depends on which panel you meet, which day of the week it is, or which precedent the court woke up remembering? Litigation has become less about legal reasoning and more about divine intervention. Predicting outcomes is no longer a professional skill; it is a gambling habit.
The tragedy is that the failure to follow precedent has created unprecedented unpredictability. As things stand, Nigerian lawyers struggle to give sound, reliable legal advice—not because the law is complex, but because it is unstable.
Adhering to precedent is still a good idea—radical as that may sound—unless there are compelling reasons to depart from it. And where such reasons exist, courts should say so clearly and overrule earlier decisions expressly. That way, at least, lawyers will know which law is dead, which one is alive, and which one is merely resting.
Until then, stare decisis in Nigeria may need to sit down and be reintroduced to the bench—gently, respectfully, and with a copy of the law report in hand.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 