The ECOWAS Court ordered Nigeria to fix its cybercrime law. What can that Court actually make a government do?

In July 2020 the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice held that section 24 of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act violated the African Charter and ordered Nigeria to repeal or amend it. Nigeria amended it in February 2024. Four years is a long time to obey a binding order, and it was a fast case.

Binding, by two texts

The Court’s own compliance page cites the two provisions that make its decisions binding. Article 15(4) of the Revised ECOWAS Treaty makes judgments binding on member states, community institutions, individuals and corporate entities. Article 24 of the 2005 Supplementary Protocol sets out how a judgment is to be executed.

The Court was expanded in 2005 to let individuals and entities bring cases directly, which is why a Nigerian civil-society group could sue Nigeria there without first exhausting Nigerian courts. It now operates under four mandates: a community court, a human-rights court, a public-service court and an arbitration tribunal.

How an order is supposed to reach a government

The mechanism, as the Court’s President, Justice Ricardo Cláudio Monteiro Gonçalves, described it to the first meeting of national enforcement authorities in Lagos in June 2025:

1. The Court issues a judgment.
2. Under Article 24(2), the judgment is enforced through a writ of execution submitted to a Competent National Authority in the member state.
3. That authority verifies the writ and acts “in accordance with domestic civil procedure rules” to execute it.
4. Under Article 24(4), every member state must designate such an authority and notify the Court. Ten of the twelve member states have done so.

That is the whole chain. There is no bailiff, no regional police, no fine the Court can levy on a state. Execution runs through the member state’s own ministry of justice and its own civil procedure.

Where it breaks

The Guardian reported the number the Court’s President gave at that same meeting: only 22 per cent of the Court’s judgments have been enforced by member states. He called non-enforcement a “threat to the very existence” of the Court. The Chief Registrar, Dr Yaouza Ouro-Sama, listed the persistent obstacles: legal instruments not domesticated, insufficient political commitment, and no implementing legislation.

Nigeria’s Attorney-General, Lateef Fagbemi, represented at the meeting by a director in his ministry, said harmonising enforcement protocols was “imperative”. Nigeria is one of the ten states with a designated authority.

What the section 24 case shows

Read the Nigerian timeline against that mechanism. The ECOWAS judgment landed on 10 July 2020. Nothing in the chain above forced the National Assembly to act; the amendment that finally gave effect to the order was signed on 28 February 2024, after the applicants’ lawyers wrote to the Attorney-General and filed further suits. The Court’s order was a lever. The hand on the lever was domestic.

So: an ECOWAS judgment can declare a Nigerian law incompatible with the Charter. It can order repeal. It cannot repeal. It cannot stop a prosecution in a Nigerian court while the state decides whether to comply. For a journalist facing a section 24 petition, the regional judgment is an argument to make before a Nigerian judge, not a shield that stops the petition being filed.

The caveat on the numbers

The 22 per cent figure is the Court’s own, reported by The Guardian from the President’s address. The Court’s compliance page does not publish a running enforcement table. “Twelve member states” is the Court’s own count on its compliance page; the page says ten of twelve have designated authorities but does not name the two that have not.