For many litigants, obtaining judgment represents the culmination of years of legal battles. Yet for successful litigants, victory in court is often only the beginning of a more challenging struggle: recovering the judgment debt and, in many cases, tracing hidden assets used to frustrate enforcement.
A judgment that cannot be enforced is little more than a symbolic declaration of rights. Consequently, the effectiveness of any judicial system is measured not merely by its ability to pronounce judgments, but by its capacity to ensure that successful litigants enjoy the fruits of those judgments. It may therefore be argued that one of the greatest weaknesses of the Nigerian civil justice system lies not in obtaining judgments but in enforcing them.
