THE NIGERIAN CONSTITUTION AND THE PROTECTION OF THE VULNERABLE IN THE SOCIETY

Abstract

Who a vulnerable person is within a given society depends on several constructions but generally social status and situational or context-specific living conditions shape vulnerability and has made social protection to evolve differently in different socioeconomic and political contexts. With the aim of evaluating the position of vulnerable persons under the Nigeria constitution, this paper identified that national, regional and international obligations reinforce the need to give effect to the constitutional rights of those identified as vulnerable persons. Beyond the human rights provisions in the Constitution, Nigeria has enacted laws to protect identified vulnerable groups, but this research identified some factors that devalue constitutional efforts at protecting the vulnerable within the Nigerian society. The irony of a constitution born from the people and of which the people are in government, yet suffer hunger, unemployment, impoverishment, abandonment, homelessness, violence, economic disability, illiteracy, sexually violations, religious; ethnic and culturally mismanagement, are the characters of a failed state. Taking any transformative approach must be reflected in the core design of social protection interventions and its linkages with complementary programmes and services for vulnerable persons.