21 June

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What is Intellectual Property Law in Nigeria?

Every time a Nollywood producer releases a film, an Afrobeats musician records a song, or a manufacturer in Aba puts a label on a shoe, intellectual property law is working in the background. It decides who owns the idea, who can profit from it, and who can be stopped when someone else tries to take it. For Nigerian law students, understanding what intellectual property law is and how it operates in Nigeria is not just an academic exercise. The industries that intellectual property law governs, from music and film to pharmaceuticals and consumer goods, sit at the heart of the...

21 June

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Conditions for Copyright Protection in Nigeria: Originality, Fixation and Qualifying Factors

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law, Legal News

A Nigerian software company discovers that a competitor has installed unlicensed copies of Microsoft Windows across its entire office network. Microsoft Corporation, a company incorporated in the United States, wants to sue for infringement in a Nigerian court. Does it have any right to do so? This is not a hypothetical concern. It is, almost word for word, the question that reached the Nigerian Court of Appeal in 2011, and the answer the court gave has shaped how foreign copyright owners approach Nigerian litigation ever since. Works Eligible for Copyright in Nigeria Under the Copyright Act 2022 established what kind of...

21 June

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Works Eligible for Copyright in Nigeria Under the Copyright Act 2022

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

A university student in Ibadan films a comedy skit on her phone, writes the jingle that plays over it herself, and posts it online. A software developer in Yaba builds a budgeting app and writes every line of its code from scratch. An Afrobeats producer lays a new beat under a sample of a forgotten highlife record from the 1970s. All three have created something. The question this article answers is which of these creations actually qualifies for copyright protection under Nigerian law, and what conditions each one must satisfy before the law will recognise it as a protected work...

21 June

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International Copyright Conventions and Nigeria: Berne, Rome, UCC and TRIPS

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, IP Law

When a Nollywood film streams in London, when an Afrobeats producer samples a Jamaican dancehall riddim, or when a UK record label licenses a Burna Boy track for an advertisement, a quiet question sits underneath the transaction: whose copyright law applies, and does Nigerian protection mean anything outside Nigeria's borders? The answer lies in a small group of international treaties that Nigeria has joined over the past three decades. Understanding what these treaties require, and just as importantly, what Nigeria has and has not actually brought into its domestic law, is essential before any other topic in copyright law can...

09 June

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Emotional Perception AI Ltd v Comptroller General of Patents [2026] UKSC 3: How the Supreme Court Rewrote the Rules on AI Patents

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in AI and Law, Case Analysis, Educational Articles, Landmark Judgments

For twenty years, a UK patent applicant whose invention ran on a computer faced a particular kind of frustration. It was not enough to show that the invention was new, clever, or commercially valuable. The applicant first had to survive a threshold test that had nothing to do with those qualities. Under the Aerotel framework, the courts asked a preliminary question that tripped up a significant number of genuinely novel software and artificial intelligence inventions before they could even be assessed on their merits. In February 2026, the UK Supreme Court looked at that framework, found it logically flawed, and...

09 June

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What Are the Statutory Elements to Prove Murder in Nigeria?

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Legal News

What Are the Statutory Elements to Prove Murder in Nigeria? To prove murder in Nigeria, the prosecution must establish four key elements beyond a reasonable doubt: that a person has died, that the accused caused the death, that the act or omission causing the death was unlawful, and that the accused acted with malice aforethought. These requirements are rooted in Nigeria's dual criminal law system, primarily defined by the Criminal Code Act in the southern states and the Penal Code Act in the northern states. The burden of proof rests entirely on the prosecution. It isn't enough to show that the accused...

07 June

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The 3 Ingredients to Prove Armed Robbery in Nigeria

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Legal News

The 3 Ingredients to Prove Armed Robbery in Nigeria The case file landed with a thud. Inside were grainy photos from a roadside stop in Lekki, a victim's panicked statement, and a signed confession from a young man picked up two days later. To the police, it was an open-and-shut armed robbery case. Six months later in court, it fell apart completely. This happens more often than you think, because a confession is never enough. To successfully prove armed robbery in Nigeria, the prosecution must prove three specific ingredients beyond a reasonable doubt: that a robbery actually took place, that the perpetrators...

05 June

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Confession Admissibility in Nigeria: The Law vs. The Reality

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Legal News

Confession Admissibility in Nigeria: The Law vs. The Reality The air in the interrogation room is thick and still. A single fluorescent bulb hums overhead. Across a scarred wooden table, a police officer slides a pen and a few sheets of paper towards a suspect who has been in custody for ten hours. "Just sign this," the officer says, his voice low. "Tell us what happened, and you can go home." In that moment, a statement is taken that could decide the suspect's fate for decades. But is it admissible in court? A confessional statement is only admissible in a Nigerian court...

01 June

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Nigerian Law of Evidence: A Complete Guide for Law Students

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Case Analysis, Evidence Law

The law of evidence is the body of rules that governs how facts are proved in judicial proceedings. It is adjectival law, meaning it regulates the machinery through which substantive law is applied rather than creating rights and liabilities of its own. It answers three questions in every case: what facts may be proved, how they may be proved, and by whom. The governing statute is the Evidence Act 2011. It applies to all judicial proceedings in courts of record in Nigeria, with specific exceptions for customary courts, area courts in civil matters, Sharia courts, and arbitration tribunals under section 256(1)....

01 June

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Official and Privileged Communications in Nigeria: State Secrets, Legal Privilege and Fair Hearing

Posted by Kolawole Adebowale

in Class Notes, Evidence Law

In 2019, a federal minister was being investigated for fraud. The prosecution applied to compel the Director-General of the State Security Service to testify about communications made in the course of a national security investigation. The attorney-general objected, citing the public interest in maintaining the confidentiality of state security operations. The court had to decide: does the state's interest in secrecy outweigh the accused's right to have all relevant evidence placed before the court? This is the tension at the heart of official and privileged communications in Nigerian evidence law. On one side sits the general principle that all relevant evidence...

Author: Kolawole Adebowale