Islamic Law and Debt Recovery: Professional Guidelines for Practitioners in North West Nigerian Commercial Courts

Commercial debt recovery under Islamic law involves a distinctive set of doctrinal obligations, procedural requirements, and ethical constraints rooted in the Fiqh al-Muamalat tradition, and the professional standards for legal practitioners representing clients in Islamic debt recovery proceedings in North West Nigerian courts require systematic development. This study develops professional guidelines for Islamic debt recovery practice in North West Nigerian commercial courts. A professional legal practice research methodology is adopted, analysing relevant Islamic jurisprudential principles on debt, credit documentation (Tadwin al-Dayn), debt acknowledgment (Iqrar), court attachment (Habs), and insolvency alongside the procedural rules of Sharia courts in Kano, Kaduna, and Sokoto States. Structured interviews with twenty-five legal practitioners and fifteen Sharia court judges specialising in commercial matters provide practice-based insights. The study identifies the procedural requirements for valid debt claims in Islamic law, the Islamic doctrines on debt security instruments (Rahn), the ethical constraints on debt collection practices, and the standards for calculating Islamic damages on delayed payments. Available professional commercial law literature from North West Nigeria identifies inconsistent judicial approaches to debt security enforcement and limitations of Rahn as collateral as key professional challenges. The Maliki and Hanafi commercial law traditions and the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 2023 debt arbitration provisions provide the analytical framework. Recommendations include a professional Islamic debt recovery practice guide, standardised pleadings templates, and training modules for commercial law practitioners in North West Nigeria. Keywords: Islamic debt recovery, commercial law, Sharia courts, professional guidelines, North West Nigeria.