This article examines the infusion of information communication technology (ICT) into Nigeria's new company legislation to promote corporate democracy. While the initiative is laudable, especially in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, the article argues that the reform is of limited value, as only private companies are empowered to deploy ICT in the conduct of general meetings. By excluding public companies, the article argues, inter alia, that the reform overlooks the role that ICT could play in addressing the assumed passivity of latent, large groups, which typify the shareholders of public companies. In making a case for inclusive reform, the article examines the reforms already undertaken by some countries in the common law jurisdictions, whose templates on the subject may inform the changes Nigeria needs to effect in her law.

This paper re-examines the import of Rawls’s theory of justice for private sector institutions in the face of the decline of the welfare state. The argument is based on a Rawlsian conception of justice as the establishment of a basic structure of society that guarantees a fair distribution of primary goods. We propose that the decline of the welfare state witnessed in Western countries over the past forty years prompts a reassessment of the boundaries of the basic structure in order to include additional corporate institutions. A discussion centered on the primary good of self-respect, but extensible to power and prerogatives as well as income and wealth, examines how the legislator should intervene in private sector institutions to counterbalance any unfairness that results from the decline of the welfare state.