Two significant aspects of life in Nigeria have inspired this book. The first is the relationship between the lack of access to water, healthcare, education and electricity and the abject level of poverty in the country. Life for millions of Nigerians is characterised by daily experiences of suffering due to their inability to access, by any acceptable standards, some of the most basic requirements for sustenance. Indeed, language, particularly the dominant language of economics, tends to fail in providing the kind of analytical, descriptive and normative tools capable of assisting people to appreciate or articulate the intrinsic nature of the objects above, including the suffering entailed in being unable to access them.

To its credit, the economic concept of public goods, as the objects above have dominantly come to be known, draws attention to the collective nature of their consumption and production, something that has made them unsuitable for market provisioning. As important as this attribute may be, their public-ness, in terms of collective enjoyment or supply, does not sufficiently explain why they should be valued, so much so that they should benefit from special legal protection.