THE NIGERIA CRIMINAL LAW A SOCIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF THE FORM, CONTENT AND OPERATION

THE NIGERIA CRIMINAL LAW A SOCIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF THE FORM, CONTENT AND OPERATION

Abstract:

This study examines the form, content, and operation of the Nigeria criminal law, using the Marxist perspective which, more than others, emphasises developmental relationship between law and society and pesits “historical concreteness” and sociological analysis as proper methods of investigation into law. The premise is that law is a social phenomenon, bound up with the corresponding philosophical and sociological traditions, whose effective urn anding (with regards to the nature and administration of law) requires reaching beyond the veneer of legal “verities” to the ideologies that dictate or determine its substantive rules. With particular reference to structural organisation and language, the form of the law is found to be “chaotic” (with irrelevant distinctions) and largely incomprehensible – all bearing the marks of the law’s English parentage. For the content, it is found, using “exhaustiveness of offence-formulation0 (i.e. the quantity of law) as the parameter of “seriousness” that the law places more “premium” on property-offence category than other categories. Further analysis establishes a strong link between this dominant characteristics and the bourgeois xiii s oc i o- economic relations which the law’s model w a s designed to regulate in the 19th Century England. Additionally, the real face of this law is ascertained by assessing the public impression about the activities of the Nigeria Police force (N.P.F.), Area and MAGISTrate Courts, etc., and it is found, among other things, that the public confidence in, and respect for, these operational units are, generally speaking, very 1ow; and that the bias of the law, discernible from the “diagnosis” ana treatment of the Nigerian criminal justice system, is heavily tilted against the underprivileged. The findings and discussions put together effectively locate the form, content and operation of the law in the context of its English legal parentage and the circumstances of colonialism through which the law was “imported” to Nigeria and maintained to this day. Following from this, the study articulates the implications of this law (particularly its bourgeois-oriented content) for the Nigerian society and recommends the development of a new criminal law (as a long-term measure) with primary attention on the simplification and publicity of the law thro. well designed legal education programme. And based upon all this, it is posited that Sociology of Law in Nigeria must be designed and operationalised within the tradition of the “critical sociology” to be relevant and useful

THE NIGERIA CRIMINAL LAW A SOCIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF THE FORM, CONTENT AND OPERATION