NATURE AND SCOPE OF STATUTES OF LIMITATION UNDER NIGERIAN LAWS

IBE, ANTHONY RALUCHUKWU (2026) NATURE AND SCOPE OF STATUTES OF LIMITATION UNDER NIGERIAN LAWS. Other thesis, Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu.

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Abstract

This study examines the nature and scope of statutes of limitation under Nigerian law, with particular attention to the structural fragmentation arising from the coexistence of the Public Officers Protection Act (POPA), Cap P41, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, and the diverse body of state limitation legislation governing civil actions across the federation. The aim of the study is to provide a comprehensive and critical doctrinal analysis of the Nigerian limitation law regime, to identify the legal inconsistencies and structural inadequacies that undermine its operation, and to propose specific legislative and judicial reforms capable of producing a limitation framework that is coherent, equitable, and consistent with modern constitutional values. The doctrinal research methodology is adopted throughout, relying on primary sources comprising the Limitation Act (Cap 522, LFN 1990), the Limitation Law of Lagos State (Cap L67, Laws of Lagos State 2015), the Public Officers Protection Act, and the authoritative decisions of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, supplemented by secondary sources including textbooks, peer-reviewed articles, and institutional reports. The study finds, first, that the limitation law regime in Nigeria rests on sound and enduring policy foundations — the public interest in the finality of litigation, the preservation of evidence, and the protection of defendants from indefinite liability — but that those foundations are undermined in practice by a piecemeal legislative structure in which thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory each operate under distinct limitation regimes, producing a jurisdictional lottery in which the survival of a civil claim may depend more on the geographical location of the parties than on the merits of the dispute. Second, the study finds that POPA's three-month window, while judicially ameliorated by a body of exceptions developed by the Supreme Court — including exclusions for employment relationships, land recovery claims, and bad-faith conduct — remains constitutionally precarious and disproportionately burdensome in cases of latent or complex wrongs. Third, the study finds that the discovery rule and the tolling exceptions for legal disability, fraudulent concealment, and acknowledgment of debt, though adequate in their basic architecture, are insufficiently developed and inconsistently applied across jurisdictions, leaving meritorious claimants without remedy in cases where rigid application of the accrual rule produces manifest injustice. The study recommends: the enactment by the National Assembly of a single, comprehensive Limitation of Actions Act applicable across the federation; the fundamental reform of POPA to extend its primary period to not less than twelve months and to incorporate a date-of-knowledge provision for latent damage cases; the statutory entrenchment of judicial exceptions to POPA's protective reach in cases of bad faith or ultra vires conduct; the vesting in courts of a structured discretion to extend limitation periods in personal injury and latent damage cases modelled on sections 11 to 14A of the United Kingdom Limitation Act 1980; and the consolidation and clarification of the tolling exceptions in a unified national statute to address the lacuna created by supervening disability in cases of catastrophic personal injury.

Item Type:	Thesis (Other)
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Law
Depositing User:	COMFORT AJALA
Date Deposited:	27 Jul 2026 13:55
Last Modified:	27 Jul 2026 13:55
URI:	http://eprints.gouni.edu.ng/id/eprint/6047

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