Legal Commons held a discussion on public litigation in Nigeria: accessing its impact, opportunities and challenges. The conversation is part of it Impact Conversation Series.
The Conversation featured a panel of foremost public interest lawyers in Nigeria including Mojirayo Ogunlana-Nkanga, Principal Partner, MON Legal: Kolawale Oluwadare (Assistant Director, Socio-Economics Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP); Solomon Okedara (Co-Founder, Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative): Hameed Ajibola (Legal Practitioner, Social Justice Activist) and moderated by our own Roseline Okoro (Legal Commons Program Associate, Citizens Common International).
It was an engaging conversation as the discussants highlighted challenges limiting the potential of public interest cases in Nigeria, such as enforcement of judgment across the different levels of government; cost of litigation, speed of hearing cases in our extremely slow judicial system, locus standi, capacity gap, and more.
The panel and audience contributors outlined some of the potentials of public interest litigation in a developing nation like ours, how we can use the power of PIL to strengthen our political systems, advance human rights, access to justice, increase political accountability, and more.
As an organization, we remain grounded in the potential of the law to advance social change and social justice and we are committed to advancing collaborative ideas, practices, and solutions to empower our legal community to be able to do more in this area.
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