Empirical Analysis of Sharia Court Judgments on Women’s Property Rights in Borno State: Gaps, Enforcement and Reform

Women's property rights under Islamic law encompass inheritance shares, mahr ownership, and business property entitlements that theoretical jurisprudence protects but empirical studies from conflict-affected northern Nigerian states such as Borno suggest are systematically under-enforced. This study empirically analyses Sharia court judgments involving women's property rights in Borno State from 2010 to 2022, identifying doctrinal application gaps and enforcement deficiencies. A doctrinal-empirical mixed methodology is applied, systematically coding and analysing seventy-five Sharia court files involving women's property claims across three court levels in Maiduguri and Biu. Judgment coding variables include property type, doctrinal basis cited, outcome for the female party, enforcement follow-up, and factors correlating with favourable outcomes. Descriptive statistics, chi-square analysis, and qualitative content analysis of selected judicial reasoning are applied in SPSS. Available empirical property rights literature from North East Nigeria identifies conflict displacement, informal settlement agreements, and inadequate access to legal representation as compounding factors reducing women's judicial property rights realisation in Borno. The Islamic doctrine of Milkiyya (property ownership) and the constitutional protections under Section 44 of the 1999 Constitution provide the normative benchmarks. Findings are expected to reveal significant disparities between doctrinal entitlement and judicial outcome, particularly for displaced women. Recommendations address legal aid provision, mobile court sessions, and post-conflict property rights restitution programmes in Borno State. Keywords: women's property rights, Sharia courts, Borno State, empirical analysis, North East Nigeria.