Nigerian Monthly Law Reports re-emerges

It was established and managed on the best principles of law reporting, clearly presenting judgements succinctly summarising the facts of the judgements, properly and incisively identifying their rationes decidendi and generally providing a veritable source material for legal research and to enable judicial precedents to be properly developed and administered by the courts.

Founding editors of the NMLR were of the highest pedigree. Unfortunately however, the excellent vision set by the founders could not be continued after a while and the publication was eventually discontinued for diverse reasons. For instance, most of them (such as the late Hon. Justice Olu Ayoola, the late Hon. Justice Akinola Aguda, Hon. Justice Yinka Ayoola, and Hon. Justice Moronkeji Onalaja), took up judicial appointments.

The company, Optimum Law Publishers, recently received the permission of the former publishers to revive the publication of the moribund NMLR – the first wholly privately-owned Nigerian law report.

Since then, several law reports have been established and have remained in publication but we daresay that the lofty standards and excellence set by the NMLR has not been met. Rather, as has become symptomatic of most of the areas of our life in Nigeria, the standards of law reporting have rapidly fallen and the quality of some law reports leaves a lot to be desired.

It is for this and other reasons that our company has taken it upon itself to resuscitate the NMLR and restore it to its pride of place, leading from the front and showing all and sundry the best in the tradition of law reporting.

The NMLR will publish all the judgements of the Supreme Court of Nigeria as well as selected judgements of the Court of Appeal and the various High Courts in the country – federal, states and FCT.

Another distinguishing feature of the report is that it has a section called editor’s note, where it highlights contradictory decisions of the same court. The law report is also packaged in a CD ROM.

The reports will be presented to the public on Thursday May 13, 2010 in Lagos.