UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF COMPULSORY DRESS CODES IN NIGERIA’S HIGHER INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

On Friday, June 17, 2022, the Supreme Court affirmed that Muslim female students in Lagos State public secondary schools had a constitutional right to wear hijab to school. This decision, coming within the perspective of the hotly-contested authority of Nigerian universities to impose dress codes on students, gives context to this paper. Nigeria’s university system may be the only one in the world, where by a system-wide protocol, undergraduates are compelled to wear uniforms. Most universities in Nigeria have regulations requiring students to comply with institutional dress codes (read uniforms). These dress codes have no proximate connection with either impartation of knowledge or formation of a well-rounded moral character. This paper undertook interrogation of the constitutionality of these dress codes. The Supreme Court’s recent hijab decision is used in this paper only to the extent that it supports the proposition that dressing implicates a constitutional issue. Whether the Court’s holding of a right to wear hijab in secondary schools is correct is beyond the scope of this paper.