AN APPRAISAL OF THE TORT OF NEGLIGENCE IN NIGERIA

ABSTRACT The tort of negligence in its developmental stages was treated merely as a way of committing other kind of tortuous offences. And it was not until 1825 that it began to be treated as an independent tort owing to its frequency. The modernization and sophistication of the society and the consequent increase of personal injury caused by negligence brought the idea of negligence as a separate tort and not simply as a means of committing other tortuous act. The research adopts the doctrinal method of research, using the primary and secondary sources of information. The primary includes judicial decisions and statutes. The secondary sources are basically textbooks, articles, journals, and internal materials. This research examines the ingredients of actionable negligence. Against the background of international standards, the research provides to the effect that what the civil wrong or tort of negligence involves in so far as it is susceptible to analysis is a duty of care, a breach of that duty and a loss arising from that duty. These ingredients do not exist separately or in vacuum. They overlap and interact. This means that for a claimant to succeed in a case of negligence in Nigeria, it is not sufficient to say that the product was defective rather the claimant must prove that the producer was negligent in the production of the product. The importance of this research is to expose the development of the tort of negligence in Nigeria, and the need for the Nigerian courts to expand the principle beyond the scope of English law in order to attain justice and meet up with the demands and trends of the society. This research concludes that that in developed nations of the world, a producer could be liable to pay damages to injured consumers by a defect in her product even if the producer exercises due care, diligence and skill in the production of her product.