A Remark on the 2023 Nigerian Arbitration and Mediation Act

The highly anticipated reform of the Nigerian Arbitration and Conciliation Act (ACA) has been enacted in the form of the Arbitration and Mediation Act (AMA), 2023. This paper, at the outset, outlines a major defect under the new legislation concerning the legitimacy of the arbitral process and thus proposes a model that addresses this concern. It then proceeds with a commentary that attempts to underscore and assess some of the important features of the 2023 Act that relatively address major aspects of the arbitral process. Therefore, it compares them with their counterparts in the commonwealth African countries in particular or the lack of it in the ACA, pointing out how those provisions would affect Nigerian arbitral practice. Despite its minor defect(s), this paper concludes by noting that the new Act would address a lot of crucial issues that the antecedent legislation did not attend to.