EXTENDING THE JURISDICTIONAL FRONTIERS OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COURT TO ENTERTAIN FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Human rights mean those rights that are essential for man’s existence in every given society. It is rights qua man in his capacity as man. However, there is need for state through the instrumentality of law to recognise these bundles of rights in order to ensure that these rights are guaranteed. Human rights background in Nigeria is traced to the pre-independence era when the Colonial government set up the Minorities Commission headed by Sir Henry Willink with a view to protecting the rights of the minorities against oppression by more powerful regions under the three regions envisaged for Nigeria at the material time. It was on account of the findings of the Sir Henry Willink’s Commission that the entrenchment of fundamental rights provisions into the Nigerian Constitution was recommended to protect the rights of not just the minorities but individual human rights hence the inclusion of human rights provision in Chapter III of the 1960 Independence Constitution of Nigeria. It is against this background that the paper canvassed for extending the jurisdictional frontiers as well as competence of the National Industrial court, a special court vested with competence over industrial matters in Nigeria, to include and accommodate fundamental rights applications. The author therefore maintained that the extending of the jurisdictional competence of the national industrial court in matters of application for enforcement of rights provisions, such a step will redound to the protection of human rights as contained in both local and international statutes should become pillars for human rights awareness, inclusive of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.