AN APPRAISAL OF LEGAL PLURARISM IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN NIGERIA

AN APPRAISAL OF LEGAL PLURARISM IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN NIGERIA

Abstract:

It is trite beyound any equivocation that the Nigerian society is made up of people with diverse cultures, behaviours and ways of life. When the British came as colonial masters, they understood this and before they departed in October 1960, they devised ways of accommodating the inherent differences in the cultures of the North and South by ultimately creating two distinct Criminal Justice Systems, the Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes System for the North and the Criminal Code/Criminal Procedure Act System for the South. This was based on the premise that there was the need to respect the people‟s diverse cultures, religions and ways of life. When the Country returned to civilian rule in 1999, some States decided to re-introduce the Islamic Criminal Justice System by enacting the Shari‟a Penal Codes and the Shari‟a Criminal Procedure Codes. Consequently, Nigeria became a federation with plural criminal justice systems. Although the three different systems of criminal justice administration have been complementing one another, the problem, however, is that their parallel existence in the administration of Nigeria‟s criminal justice has largely been characterized by conflicts and inconsistencies. This research, therefore, appraises legal pluralism in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria. In so doing, the research work adopts doctrinal as well as empirical methods of research. The sources of information relied upon include relevant Textbooks, Statutes, Articles in Journals, Case Law, Internet Materials as well as Data retrieved from Questionnaires issued to respondents on legal pluralism in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria. The research work finds that multiplicity of substantive and adjectival criminal laws, procedural differences, nature of punishments and differences of enforcement mechanisms has largely been the challenges of legal pluralism in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria. The research work concludes by recommending that the General Criminal Justice System (English – Styled Criminal Laws) comprising of the Penal/Criminal Procedure Codes and the Criminal Code/Criminal procedure Act should be unified while the Islamic Criminal Justice System should be harmonised and applied separately to only Muslims, thus enhancing limited legal pluralism. It also recommends that the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 should be adopted and domesticated as the procedural law by the States in Nigeria, with modification to suit their respective peculiarities, with respect to the general criminal justice system (English – Styled Criminal Laws).

AN APPRAISAL OF LEGAL PLURARISM IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN NIGERIA