Legal Aid and Access to Justice for Inmates in Nigeria: Challenges and Solutions

Samuel Okon Ekpeowoh and Emmanuel Ekwere Okon
Additional contact information
Samuel Okon Ekpeowoh: Home of Lawyers (Firm of Legal Practitioners), Nigeria
Emmanuel Ekwere Okon: Home of Lawyers (Firm of Legal Practitioners), Nigeria

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 2024, vol. 8, issue 10, 530-542

Abstract: One of the foundational elements of human rights is access to justice, and it is a significant impediment facing inmates in Nigeria. This paper critically accesses the availability of Legal aid services to inmates, focusing on the roles played by legal practitioners, NGOS, and pro-bono initiatives in bridging the gap in accessing justice. Several systemically imposed barriers, underfunding, institutional limitations, and general unawareness of the need and availability for such legal intervention have continued to deny many inmates their much-needed access. The paper discusses a general overview of the status of legal assistance in Nigeria from its evolution to what currently constitutes the services being given to inmates. That identifies, among others, institutional barriers, economic constraints, and lack of public awareness about the availability of legal aid. This paper provides the best practices through case studies of successful legal aid intervention applied and strategies effectively adopted in the interest of enhancing access to justice. These findings form a basis on which the study makes recommendations for improving the delivery of legal aid, targeting improvement in the institutional frameworks, increasing public awareness, leveraging technology, and promoting cases of collaboration among the stakeholders. This would be important in ensuring that inmates in Nigeria have equal opportunities to access justice and measurable fairness and transparency in the application of the law.

Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rsisinternational.org/journals/ijriss/ ... issue-10/530-542.pdf (application/pdf)
https://rsisinternational.org/journals/ijriss/arti ... enges-and-solutions/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bcp:journl:v:8:y:2024:i:10:p:530-542

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science is currently edited by Dr. Nidhi Malhan

More articles in International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science from International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Pawan Verma ().