State Institutions, Victim Protection and Access to Justice in Nigeria: A Socio-Political Analysis

Abstract

Victim protection and access to justice in Nigeria remain difficult to secure in practice, despite constitutional guarantees and a series of legal reforms. This paper examines how state institutions, namely the Police, the Courts, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and the Legal Aid Council, respond to victims of crime and human-rights violations. It adopts a qualitative doctrinal and socio-legal policy analysis of legislation, official reports and academic literature, guided by rule-of-law, state-capacity and political-economy perspectives. The analysis indicates that Nigeria has made legal progress through the Constitution, the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act 2015 and the Witness Protection and Management Act 2022. However, the protection that victims actually receive is weakened by cost, delay, limited institutional capacity, uneven state-level implementation, political influence and weak links between formal and informal justice providers. The paper concludes that further legislation alone will not close Nigeria’s justice gap, and it recommends reforms on police accountability, reparation, witness-protection funding, legal aid, formal–informal referral, inter-agency coordination and data systems.