ABSTRACT:
This paper reviews the constitutionality of the Local Government Transition Committees set up by some states in Nigeria. This has become imperative in view of the agitations from various parts of the country both for and against such committees. Several judicial pronouncements have also emerged on the issue. This includes that recently made by the Anambra State High Court in the above-stated case, which forms the background of this work. This paper argues that the current constitutional framework operational in Nigeria does not recognize such bodies and thus they should be dissolved, since their creation is unconstitutional.
Legal framework for public private partnership in Nigeria by Olufemi Soyeju
Introduction
It is an established fact that infrastructure is an enabler. It acts as catalyst and is critical to human and economic development and also the general functioning of every modern society. It defines a country’s business competitiveness and also creates jobs. It provides the sub-structure upon which a given society, the super-structure in this context, is built. It could be likened to a “jugular vein” of an existing society. Without it, a society cannot function. A country’s state of public infrastructure can be an indicator of the country’s economic development and growth. Obviously, an efficient and reliable infrastructure is critical to attract the direct foreign investment and expansion of international trade which are so crucial to growth.
This explains why in every nation, provision of infrastructure assets has always remained on the front-burner of governments’ agenda for development and policy. In Nigeria, the three tiers of government have come to appreciate the fact that provision of modern and functional infrastructure plays a vital role in the socio-economic lives of the people. Therefore, raising the bar for service delivery and tackling the lack of infrastructure have been integral components of successive governments’ visions in Nigeria.
Analysing the state of infrastructure in Nigeria presents a spectacle of a crushing lack of infrastructure assets across the nation. This huge deficit in infrastructure is easily observed in the critical sectors of the nation’s economy such as power, transportation, education, housing, water supply and healthcare. In every way, decades of underinvestment and general neglect in the area of maintenance have taken a toll on the country’s public assets.
The Global Competitiveness Report of 2010-2011, using infrastructure as one of the twelve indicators and as a factor very fundamental to a country’s ability to compete, ranked Nigeria 127th overall out of the 139 economies covered and the country receives poor assessments for its decrepit infrastructure which on its own is ranked 135th amongst 139 economies. According to the report, Nigeria’s poor infrastructure is reported to be the most problematic factor influencing trade in Nigeria. The report underscores the poor state of Nigeria’s infrastructure in that in overall quality, Nigeria’s infrastructure is ranked 134th; in the quality of roads, 128th; quality of railroad infrastructure, 104th; quality of transport infrastructure, 107th; to mention few.
The Debt Management Office4 has established the fact that Nigeria’s current infrastructure deficit requires capital investments to the tune of US$100 billion to US$111 billion, and this magnitude of financing required to bridge the country’s infrastructure deficit, currently outstrips the supply of capital available from the public sector.
So, given the scale of the nation’s infrastructure requirements and the ever-widening investment deficit in provision of public assets and service delivery in an environment of budgetary constraints, lack of capacity, general incompetence and endemic corruption, the governments, at all levels in Nigeria, are drawing on private initiatives and capital to tackle the menace of infrastructure deficits and lack of financing. This entails leveraging private sector resources and capacity for provision of infrastructure assets and services to the public through public private partnerships (PPPs) to bridge the widening infrastructure financing gap and open up the country’s vast economic potentials, fast-tracking the development process.
However, it must be noted that, by implication, the legal framework includes the regulatory system, which itself is a subset of the legal framework.
As a run-up to the proposed discussion in this article, I will look at the framework for PPP as a financing technique or model in Nigeria
Labour Crisis and Employee’s Invention: Need for Authoritative Legislation by C.J.S. Azoro & A.N. Umeh
Abstract:
The dawn of industrialization was sustained by the protection of intellectual property rights on the basis that every man has the right to benefit from the fruits of his intellect and ideas. One of the mechanisms that have helped in the area of protecting ideas and inventions over the years has being the use of patents. Industrialization is made possible by good labour relations based on the continuous mutual adjustments of the respective interests and goals of the employers and employees. In order to avoid labour crisis and further industrialization, certain duties are implied by law between the employers and the employees. One of such duties as it concerns employees is the duty of faithful service which necessarily involves the disclosure of employee’s inventions or discoveries to the employer where same was made in the course of his employment. Such disclosure however, raises the issue of proprietary right to its patent. As a result, the ownership of any patentable invention tends sometimes to generate some form of discord between the parties. The common law which originally provides for the rules in settling such discord is not all-encompassing and appears to be harsh on the employee. In order to maintain good relation, the Patents and Designs Act has intervened with a view to filling the lapses at common law. However, the salving effect of the ‘messianic-statute’ is more than meets the eyes, since the statute is no more than a declaration of the common law principles. The essence of this article therefore, is to critically examine the statute vis-à-vis similar statutes in other common law countries and make the necessary recommendations.
Keywords: patent, intellectual property, invention, industrialization, labour relations.
The Place of Customary International Law in the Nigerian Legal System – A Jurisprudential Perspective By C.J.S. Azoro
Abstract
Every society has a framework of laws and principles upon which it develops. The international society thus posits various rules upon which the sovereign states and other subjects of international law may develop in pursuit of the actualization of their interests. A similar situation obtains in Nigeria where her legal system prescribes various laws towards regulating social relations within her jurisdiction. As a sovereign state, Nigeria remains subject to international law with the incidental international responsibility for any breach of same. Though her legal system allows for the enforcement of international treaties in her municipal courts subject to certain qualifications, the law appears to be silent on the status of customary international law. This paper argues that customary international law forms part of the Nigerian legal system and should be applied where appropriate towards the maintenance of peaceful co-existence between all interests represented in the Nigerian society.
Keywords: Individual, Law, Jurisdiction, Custom, State.
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