THE SCOPE OF THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY UNDER THE 1999 CONSTITUTION

Chapter IV of the 1999 Constitution, which spanned from sections 33- 46 provides for the fundamental rights. The fundamental rights in Nigeria were first recommended to be part of the body of our laws in the Minorities Commission Reports of 1957, thereafter demands for these rights were made in the constitutional conferences of 1957 and 1958, and Balewa Govemment agreed to incorporate them in the 1960 Independence Constitution under which Nigeria was granted independence”. Prior to independence the government incorporated some of these rights into statutes and legislation. Thesé rights were subsequently repeated in successive Nigerian Constitutions with very little changes’. Generally the fundamental rights concept was derived from the idea that man is entitled to certain basic rights as humian being for living a free and meaningful life. According to one theory by John Locke, the human rights man possessed in his natural condition and that when he enters a civil society, he contracted to give part of his power to the government or the state on condition that the state so constituted shall protect the natural rights of the individual. Whenever the state violates this trust, the people have the right to take back the power and vest it in another government.