Arbitral Award Enforcement and Public Policy Exceptions in Nigerian Courts: An Analytical Study

The enforcement of foreign and domestic arbitral awards in Nigeria is governed by the Arbitration and Mediation Act 2023 and the New York Convention, to which Nigeria is a signatory. Nigerian courts retain discretion to refuse enforcement on grounds of public policy, a ground that has been inconsistently interpreted and applied in decided cases. This research conducts a systematic analytical examination of Nigerian court decisions on the public policy exception to arbitral award enforcement between 2014 and 2024, developing an original doctrinal typology of judicial approaches. A doctrinal methodology was employed, analysing all identifiable Federal High Court and appellate court decisions on enforcement applications, supplemented by structured interviews with commercial arbitration practitioners and foreign investment lawyers. Secondary sources include comparative enforcement jurisprudence from England, Singapore, and South Africa, and international arbitration scholarship. The study maps the expansion and contraction of the public policy exception in Nigerian judicial reasoning and identifies patterns of inconsistency that create uncertainty for international commercial parties. Key analytical findings include the increasingly expansive use of natural justice arguments as sub-categories of public policy objection and divergent interpretations of the procedural irregularity ground. The research contributes original doctrinal analysis to the Nigerian arbitration law literature and recommends judicial guidelines to standardise public policy exception adjudication, enhancing Nigeria's attractiveness as an arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. Keywords: arbitration, enforcement, public policy, New York Convention, Nigerian courts.