Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Philosophical Implications for the Nigerian Criminal Justice System

This study examines the philosophical debate on free will and moral responsibility and draws out its implications for the theoretical foundations of the Nigerian criminal justice system. The question of whether human beings possess genuine freedom of choice is central to the justification of criminal punishment, and different philosophical positions on this question generate radically different conceptions of what a just justice system should do. Using a descriptive philosophical design, the study engages with compatibilist, libertarian, and hard determinist positions on free will, drawing primarily on P.F. Strawson, Derk Pereboom, and Robert Kane, supplemented by secondary literature published between 2020 and 2024. Documentary analysis of selected Nigerian Supreme Court judgements involving insanity pleas and provocation defences provides the case material. Interviews with 15 legal philosophers and criminal law academics in Lagos and Enugu inform the empirical dimension. Findings reveal that the Nigerian criminal justice system implicitly adopts a libertarian free will assumption that is philosophically contestable and that this assumption generates injustices, particularly in the treatment of mentally ill offenders and juveniles. The study argues that a compatibilist philosophy of freedom and responsibility would better serve the goals of rehabilitation and deterrence than the current retributive framework. Keywords: free will, moral responsibility, criminal justice, compatibilism, Nigerian law.