TOPIC
Problematics of Engineering Social Development in Commonwealth Africa:
Ripples from the Nigerian Case of Agbai V. Okogbue.
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.
Keywords: Human Rights, Community Development, Communitarian Principle, Realist Theory,
Problem and Commonwealth Africa
Download: FULL TEXT PDF
PUBLISHED
2023-04-11
HOW TO CITE
Njoku Donatus Ikechukwu and Paul Nwodeh (2023). Anti-Communitarian Construction of Human
Rights Provisions and the Problematics of Engineering Social Development in Commonwealth
Africa: Ripples from the Nigerian Case of Agbai V. Okogbue. IDOSR Journal of Communication and
English 8(1) 13-31. https://doi.org/10.59298/IDOSR/JCE/23/10.1.72