Roman Concepts of Law and Justice in the Nigerian Constitutional Tradition: A Comparative Analysis

The Nigerian constitutional tradition was shaped significantly by British common law, which itself inherits substantial elements of Roman law. This study examines the legacy of Roman legal concepts, including natural law (ius naturale), public law (ius publicum), and equity principles derived from the praetors' edicts, in the constitutional discourse of Nigeria. A doctrinal-historical methodology was adopted, comparing selected provisions of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) with foundational texts of Roman jurisprudence including Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, Cicero's De Legibus, and Gaius's Institutiones. The study further analyses judgments of the Supreme Court of Nigeria from 2015 to 2023 for invocations of natural law reasoning and equity principles traceable to Roman legal thought. Findings indicate that the constitutional principles of equality before the law, separation of powers, and the right to fair hearing bear direct intellectual lineage to Roman legal developments. Nigerian judges occasionally invoke natural law reasoning in fundamental rights cases in ways that parallel Ciceronian jurisprudence. The study also demonstrates that the structure of the Nigerian criminal law classification system reflects the Roman categorisation of delicta and crimina. The analysis concludes that Roman law constitutes a genuinely formative, though largely unacknowledged, layer of the Nigerian legal heritage, and recommends that law faculties across Nigeria introduce Roman law as a foundational historical discipline.

Keywords: Roman law, Nigerian constitution, natural law, legal heritage, comparative jurisprudence