Ben Oloko (University of Nigeria) has posted Beyond the Checklist: Toward a Balanced Approach to Exhaustion of Statutory Remedies in Nigeria on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The exhaustion of statutory remedies doctrine is a consequential, yet under-theorised, threshold rule in Nigerian adjudication. Rooted in English equity and matured through American administrative jurisprudence, it withholds the courtroom door from a litigant who has not first walked the internal pathway the legislature designed for the dispute. This paper traces the doctrine’s common law origin, isolates its animating objectives, and interrogates the temper with which Nigerian courts have wielded it — a temper that, notwithstanding an emerging, more nuanced line of Court of Appeal authority, still leans toward treating non-exhaustion as a categorical bar rather than the flexible, discretion-respecting rule it was conceived to be. Drawing on the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McCarthy v Madigan, the paper argues for an interest-balancing approach weighing a litigant’s interest in prompt access to court against the institutional interests the doctrine protects, and closes with recommendations for a doctrine that honours both constitutional access to court and the legitimate case for letting specialised bodies speak first.
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Lawrence Solum