When society disables: Lessons for Nigeria from Britain’s uncomfortable judgement

The British court ruling that severe hair loss in women may, in law, constitute a disability has unsettled more than tax lawyers and social commentators. It has raised a fault line in contemporary legal thought – one that runs between material impairment and social harm, between bodily limitation and cultural judgement. To a Nigerian reader, the decision initially registers as faintly implausible, even indulgent: baldness elevated to disability; wigs reclassified as assistive devices; the machinery of the state mobilised to relieve psychologica