The ECOWAS Court and Civil Society Activists in Nigeria: An Anatomy and Analysis of a Robust Symbiosis

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on, and attempts to explain, two key aspects of the relationship between the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS Court and Nigerian civil society activists or CSA s. It analyses the available evidence on the ways in which these CSA s have contributed – to the generation of this regional court’s impact on the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government in Nigeria as well as analyses the available evidence regarding the impact that the court – through a combination of its design, orientation and decisions – has in turn had on the conception and dramatisation of civil society activism in Nigeria. The article develops an analytical explanation for the emergence and sustenance of the robust symbiosis that is thus revealed between the Court and this specific but important national community of civil society activists.