ABUJA — The Federal Government has completed a comprehensive audit of Nigeria’s federal statute books, reviewing 932 principal enactments alongside 731 subsidiary legislations and identifying 268 obsolete, spent, or previously repealed laws to be dropped from the upcoming 2025 edition of the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN).
Presenting the final report and draft copies of the proposed 20-volume LFN 2025 to the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), in Abuja on Thursday, November 12, 2026, the Chairman of the Committee for the Review of the Laws of the Federation, Olawale Fapohunda (SAN), confirmed that 664 principal enactments and their accompanying subsidiary regulations have been cleared for retention and consolidation.
Fapohunda noted that the two-year assignment, executed across 14 thematic working groups, uncovered widespread archaic statutory language, cumbersome cross-references, outdated chapter numbering, and sequencing inconsistencies across existing federal statutes. To prevent another prolonged lapse in statutory maintenance, the committee recommended institutionalizing a permanent mechanism for continuous law revision and advised the Attorney-General to issue formal guidelines to ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) governing how their enabling acts and subsidiary rules are periodically updated.
Receiving the report, AGF Fagbemi emphasized that the last official consolidation of the Laws of the Federation took place in 2004—more than two decades ago—during which Nigeria experienced substantial constitutional, institutional, and technological shifts. He stated that modernizing the statute books is vital to strengthening the justice sector and providing courts, legal practitioners, public institutions, and investors with a reliable, coherent legal reference.
The review exercise benefited from technical and comparative collaboration with domestic and international legal bodies, including the Nigerian Law Reform Commission, the National Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, the Lagos State Law Reform Commission, the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (ROLAC) Programme, the Law Commission of England and Wales, LexisNexis South Africa, and LawPavilion. Fagbemi called for expedited cooperation from the National Assembly to pass the necessary legislative instruments for formally repealing the 268 discarded statutes and enacting the updated compilation.
