Judicial legislation: the Supreme Court of Nigeria’s model for strategic decision-making?

The Fourth Republic is Nigeria's longest experience in democratic practice. It is a democracy founded upon the ideal of separation of powers; each branch checks the other two within defined boundaries. To act as an effective check on the political branches of government, the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, is built around structures that guarantee its independence. This article assesses the Supreme Court of Nigeria's use of discretion within this web and argues that the court now inevitably allows powerful actors to bank on its legitimacy and induce it to overstretch its competence to satisfy their individual policy and political preferences. This trend, the article finds, is antithetical to the concept of judicial independence. A court's independence is not only apparent when it is able to do what it is meant to do but also when it is able to refrain from what it is not meant to do.