CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background to the Study

The Legal atmosphere in any given society affects business operation.

Business strives well when business legislation are well defined and aimed at

creating a favourable environment for business to thrive. These pieces of

legislation will further national goals, stimulating the economy, conserving

foreign exchange, enhancing competition among business entities, by

prohibiting monopolistic tendencies and unfair method of competition by

firms. It will also ensure that contracts are entered into and executed, with

justice done to the parties and their right adequately protected.

In Nigeria, there is a plethora of business and commercial laws that govern

different aspects of business environment for example, banking, insurance,

capital market, etc. At this point, it is important to know what “law is”. For

the purpose of this study, we shall adopt some definitions.

The definition by an eminent Nigerian jurist is that, “the law of a given

society is the body of rules, which are recognized as obligatory by its

members”1

1     Elias T. O (1956), Nature of African Customary Law, Routledge and Kegan Paul, p.55

1

It is therefore the entire body of principles, norms or regulation that governs

human conduct, the observance of which can be enforced.

Also “law” is defined by Cicero 1959 as, “the highest reason implanted in

nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite . . .

what is right and that is also eternal, and does not begin or end with written

statutes. ..”2

This means natural or moral laws which accord with our basic sense of

justice of what is wrong and right in the state of nature, as opposed to or in

contrast with legislative or man-made law.

Another definition is that, “law is a body of rules designed or formulated to

guide human conduct or action which are enforced among members of a

given state or society.”3

This refers to man-made law which exists to ensure legal order and due

administration of justice in an organized society.

During the period of the state of nature, man and animals wondered about in

the bush, forest, searching for food, a place to rest and eventually to lay head

when it is night in order to sleep. Sleep at that time (state of nature) used to

be at any place in the bush, like animals without shelter. This was prone to

2     Fitzgerad P.J. (1966), Salmond on Jurispruence. Twelfth Edition, Sweet & Maxwell, London, p. 643