By Tony Okafor
In Nigeria, the long-established legal maxim ignorantia juris non excusat—ignorance of the law excuses no one—has traditionally guided courts and lawmakers.
It is a principle intended to preserve order, certainty, and accountability within the legal system.
Yet the reality of Nigeria’s legal environment tells a different story. In a country where laws proliferate faster than they can be understood, where amendments may appear overnight, and where regulations are sometimes crafted to serve fleeting political or executive interests, the rigid application of this maxim has become increasingly untenable.
It is time to confront a difficult but necessary truth: in certain circumstances, ignorance of the law should indeed be an excuse.
In Nigeria, laws are too often “smuggled in” through hurried legislative or regulatory processes, enacted with little public notice or debate. What is law today may cease to be law tomorrow morning, buried under amendments, repeals, subsidiary regulations, or dubious judicial interpretations.
For the average citizen—hard-working, law-abiding, and simply trying to survive—keeping pace with such rapid and opaque legal changes is practically impossible.
Should a citizen be punished for violating a statute they could not reasonably have known existed, or one that was altered hours before it was unknowingly breached? Justice, logic, and fairness all suggest otherwise.
The problem is compounded by the multiplicity of legal systems operating in Nigeria. Statutory law exists alongside customary law, Islamic law, delegated legislation, and an ever-expanding body of case law. Conflicts between these systems are not uncommon.
An act that is lawful under customary or religious law may simultaneously offend statutory provisions, leaving citizens perpetually uncertain about their legal standing.
Even the law’s definition of something as fundamental as adulthood lacks uniformity. In some contexts, adulthood is attained at eighteen years; in others, at twenty-one. If the law itself cannot speak with one voice on such a basic issue, it is hardly surprising that citizens are left confused. In such circumstances, ignorance is not negligence—it is the natural consequence of systemic inconsistency.
Critics will argue that allowing ignorance of the law as an excuse would undermine the rule of law. That concern is valid, but misplaced.
The argument is not for blanket immunity or reckless disregard for legal obligations. Rather, the law must distinguish between deliberate defiance and genuine, reasonable unawareness, particularly where laws are obscure, inaccessible, abruptly enacted, or constantly changing.
Courts can—and should—recognise ignorance as a mitigating factor, and in appropriate cases, as a valid defence, especially where the state has failed in its duty to adequately publicise, clarify, and stabilise the law. Legal certainty is a cornerstone of justice; where certainty is absent, punishment becomes indistinguishable from ambush.
In a nation where legal uncertainty—and at times legal ambush—is as harmful as criminal intent, the blind insistence on ignorantia juris non excusat is not justice; it is cruelty disguised as doctrine. The law must serve the people, not entrap them.
It is time for Nigerian lawmakers and judges to confront this reality with courage and honesty. In this context, ignorance of the law is not a moral failing; it is an indictment of a system that urgently requires clarity, accessibility, fairness, and reason.
