Decolonising Nigerian Private International Law: Towards an Afrocentric Conflict of Laws Doctrine

Nigerian private international law, governing choice of law, jurisdictional authority, and foreign judgment enforcement in cross-border civil disputes, remains substantially unreformed since independence, retaining doctrinal structures and choice of law methodologies inherited from English private international law of the colonial era. These inherited doctrines reflect assumptions about legal relations, family structures, and commercial norms that are frequently ill-suited to Nigerian social realities and the demands of contemporary African transnational legal relations. This doctoral research undertakes an original decolonial scholarly project within Nigerian private international law, critically examining inherited conflict of laws doctrine and developing an Afrocentric alternative framework grounded in African legal philosophy, the ECOWAS legal order, and indigenous dispute resolution traditions. A critical legal theory methodology is employed, combining extended doctrinal critique of existing Nigerian PIL authorities with constructive theoretical development drawing on decolonial legal theory, African political philosophy, and comparative PIL from South Africa, Ethiopia, and Senegal. Secondary sources include PIL scholarship, postcolonial legal theory, and African jurisprudence from 2015 to 2024. The research makes original scholarly contributions through a systematic decolonial critique of seven foundational PIL doctrines in Nigerian law; the construction of an original Afrocentric PIL framework incorporating communitarian choice of law principles; and a normative theory of ECOWAS PIL harmonisation grounded in Pan-African constitutionalism. Keywords: private international law, decolonisation, Afrocentric jurisprudence, conflict of laws, Nigeria.