THE chilling revelation by the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Kazeem Alogba, that 50 per cent of homicide cases in the state are “trumped-up charges” is disturbing. It highlights the saddening reality of the country’s flawed justice delivery system. It means that many Lagos residents have been made to suffer the indignity and trauma of unlawful arrests, illegal detention, and prosecution over what they never knew anything about. In the process, they are subjected to sordid conditions they should not have been made to go through ab initio in saner climes. This is unacceptable and condemnable.

It is even more painful that, as the Lagos Chief Judge said, there is no provision in Nigeria’s laws to compensate such victims of official negligence, mischief or dereliction of duty.

At a two-day workshop, themed, ‘The Coroners’ System Law in the 21st Century Lagos,’ organised by Mojisola Dada, the Chief Coroner of Lagos State, Alogba said, “Fifty per cent of the homicide cases in the state are trumped-up charges. Even when these victims are eventually acquitted of the trumped-up charges, no law provides people like them with compensation.” Such double jeopardy should not be allowed to continue.

Legal experts define homicide as “the killing of one human being, including an unborn child, by another.” This includes murder, manslaughter, excusable homicide, justifiable homicide, or vehicular homicide.

By law, it is the duty of a coroner to determine and certify the cause of such a death within a particular jurisdiction. A coroner may also conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of unnatural death and investigate, or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within the coroner’s jurisdiction. Part 2, Section 4 of the Lagos State Coroner’s System Law 2007 that established a new system of investigation of death in the state, otherwise known as the Coroner Law, empowers the coroner to hold an inquest into suspicious deaths that come to his or her knowledge.

Sadly, this is not often the case. The Chief Pathologist of the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, John Obafunwa, avers that “what we have most times is that after a crime, the police remove the bodies from the scene of the crime and bring them to us, which makes our work in identifying the cause of death nearly impossible.”

This disclosure has further brought to the fore the need for police personnel, as well as medical and legal practitioners to be well-trained to ensure thorough, scientific, and forensic investigation into causes of deaths before hastily proceeding to prosecute alleged crime suspects. Ideally, diligent prosecution should follow only after thorough investigation.

With police investigators failing to carry out thorough, painstaking investigation into cases involving unnatural deaths, many people have had to face an uncertain future in prison custody. Many have had to wait interminably to have their day in court without luck as shoddy investigations make such difficult. Any action or inaction by any agency of state that makes an innocent citizen to suffer unintended consequences does not advance the cause of justice. It is a gross violation of the fundamental human rights of citizens which every democracy is obligated to protect. As the English jurist, William Blackstone, wrote, “Better that 10 guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

Obafunwa’s lamentation at the workshop about the dearth of “crime scene knowledge” among police officers is particularly disturbing. “After a crime, there’s a format for removing bodies at the scene. It is imperative that the crime scene is cordoned off and a coroner is called,” he counselled. Given that the efficacy of police investigation into unnatural deaths is dependent on the coroner’s inquest–a major requirement for diligent prosecution–there is a need to train members of the police homicide unit and judicial workers on how best to carry out their tasks. The frequent transfer of trained personnel out of their duty posts during a prosecution should be reviewed. It is high time Nigeria implemented a formula to decentralise its police structure to enhance operational effectiveness.

The National Assembly should work on this, including the payment of huge compensation to victims of wrongful arrest, illegal detention, and frivolous prosecution in our laws. This way, the police will be more circumspect before storming crime scenes and embarking on indiscriminate arrest and prosecution of innocent citizens without proof.

This partly explains why there has been no real conclusion to most high-profile murder cases in the country. Till date, those involved in the murder of a former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Bola Ige, former NADECO chief, Alfred Rewane, Lagos politician, Funso Williams, and a Peoples Democratic Party stalwart, Harry Marshal, have yet to be unravelled by the police after more than a decade. The subsisting trial by ordeal and torture of suspects to extract confession or implicate them rather than through diligent investigation is barbaric and oppressive; it is a lazy way out for the police. The police authorities should stamp it out.

The police should ensure that crime scenes are always cordoned off and forensic investigators properly kitted. A situation where police investigators at crime scenes do not wear gloves is unacceptable. That will likely contaminate the fingerprints of the perpetrators and other evidence.

To ensure that Nigerians, mostly the poor and voiceless, are not made to languish needlessly in jail on trumped-up charges owing to poor police investigations, the respective state Chief Judges should embark on frequent visits to prisons and detention facilities to free deserving detainees in the exercise of their power of pardon. This will go a long way in decongesting the overcrowded prisons.

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