An Original Contribution to the Theory of Legal Empowerment and Access to Justice for Informal Sector Workers in Nigerian Business Law

Informal sector workers in Nigeria, numbering over 80 million, operate at the margins of the business law system, lacking access to formal employment contract protections, labour court remedies, and consumer rights, yet the theoretical relationship between legal empowerment strategies and improved business law access for informal workers has not been systematically developed for the Nigerian context. This study makes an original contribution to the theory of legal empowerment for informal sector workers in Nigerian business law, drawing on legal empowerment theory, access to justice scholarship, and capabilities approach development theory to develop an original Informal Worker Legal Empowerment Model (IWLEM) for Nigeria. The IWLEM identifies four legal empowerment pathways applicable to informal worker business law challenges: legal literacy programmes (addressing knowledge deficits), institutional design reforms (reducing procedural barriers to justice), paralegal network development (extending legal guidance beyond the formal legal profession), and policy advocacy coalitions (enabling collective voice for informal economy reform). The framework is developed through systematic literature review, expert consultation with 40 legal empowerment practitioners, labour lawyers, and policy specialists across all geopolitical zones, and empirical validation through a before-after study of 200 informal workers who participated in a legal empowerment programme in Lagos and Kano. Results demonstrate significant improvements in legal knowledge, rights assertion, and dispute resolution effectiveness following empowerment programme participation. The IWLEM constitutes an original theoretical contribution linking access to justice theory with practical informal economy policy in Nigeria.

Keywords: legal empowerment, access to justice, informal sector, informal workers, Nigeria