Adapting, Not Altering: Why Nigeria Should Review Its African Charter Act

Last year, a corporate defendant in the English courts made an argument that should give Nigerian policymakers pause. In Alame & Ors v Shell Plc & Anor [2025] EWHC 1539 (KB), the Bille and Ogale Communities case, Shell’s lawyers argued that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as domesticated in Nigeria, imposed obligations principally on the State and did not provide a clear basis for claims against private corporate entities. The King’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice accepted that position on its assessment of Nigerian law, leaving communities affected by decades of oil pollution in the Niger Delta to face an obstacle rooted not in the Charter itself, but in how a foreign court understood the Nigerian statute through which the Charter operates domestically.