Theory of Islamic Legal Change: Mechanisms, Agents and Constraints in the Nigerian Sharia Reform Experience

Legal change within an Islamic law system raises distinctive theoretical questions about the mechanisms through which new legal rules are legitimately generated, the institutional actors authorised to drive doctrinal development, and the theological and jurisprudential constraints that bound the pace and direction of Islamic law evolution. Nigeria's twenty-five-year Sharia reimplementation experience provides a rich empirical case study for theorising Islamic legal change. This study develops an original theory of Islamic legal change, drawing on the Nigerian Sharia experience as its primary empirical case. The theoretical methodology integrates three theoretical traditions: Razian theories of legal change and sources of law, the sociology of Islamic law change from Wael Hallaq and Baber Johansen, and Kuhnian paradigm shift theory applied to legal change. The empirical component analyses forty major legal developments in northern Nigerian Sharia law from 1999 to 2024, coding the type of change (legislative, judicial, scholarly, or popular), the institutional agent, the jurisprudential methodology employed, and the factors that accelerated or constrained change. Forty structured interviews with Sharia judges, scholars, and legislators supplement the documentary analysis. The original theoretical contribution is a Nigerian Islamic Legal Change Model specifying five mechanisms of Islamic legal change (legislative Ijtihad, judicial evolutionism, scholarly Fatwa, popular resistance, and constitutional constraint) and the conditions under which each mechanism dominates. This model makes an original contribution to the sociology of law within Islamic legal studies. Keywords: Islamic legal change, Nigeria, Sharia reform, legal theory, sociology of Islamic law.