Prosecutors not responsible for delayed trial – Kwara DPP

We are indeed quite happy about it. Not just for the sake of the judgement, not just because the judgement favours us but it is one of the judgments that has been of concern to Kwara State.

Salihu Isiaka, the respondent, who has just been condemned to death by the Supreme Court was freed by the Court of Appeal earlier on and we were not happy about it so we appealed to the Supreme Court. So we are happy that the Supreme Court has reasoned along with us because he is not just a criminal but a habitual criminal. Even when the Court of Appeal released him while we were awaiting the outcome of the Supreme Court judgment, he had another armed robbery issue in which a life was even lost. So we feel happy that at last the Supreme Court allowed our appeal which has assisted us in keeping the security of the state because he is one of those very dangerous elements in the community which I think the law should really take care of.

That is why that day was a special day for us. Like I had earlier said, it is not the judgment, it is the implication of the judgment to the society, the victims of the offense and of course the accused himself.

As matter of fact, I want to tell you that whether we like it or not it is one of the most progressive innovations to Nigerian legal setting. Of course I am a prosecutor. I know what to prosecute. You see the practice is one thing, but  so also is to appreciate the principles of the matter. When you put Nigerian factor into anything, you see the negative effect of such thing.

Plea bargain is provided for in sections 180(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act and Section 14(2) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Act 2004.

Section 180(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act provides as follows:

“When more charges than one are made against a person and a conviction had been had on one or more of them the prosecutor may, with the consent of the court, withdraw the remaining charge or charges; or the court, of its own motion, may stay the trial of such charge or charges.”

Without a doubt, all that Section 180(1) does is to empower either the court or the prosecution, with the consent of the court, to withdraw or stay some counts against an accused person where that person has been convicted of some of the other counts with which he was charged. This evidently shows that the decision to drop some charges will occur only after a conviction has been secured against the accused person. However, in plea bargain the decision to withdraw some counts against the accused person occurs before the trial of the accused person.

On its part, Section 14(2) of the EFCC Act provides as follows:

 “Subject to the provision of Section 174 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (which relates to the power of the Attorney-General of the Federation to institute, continue or discontinue criminal proceedings against any persons in any court of law), the commission may compound any offence punishable under this Act by accepting such sums of money as it thinks fit, not exceeding the amount of the maximum fine to which that person would have been liable if he had been convicted of that offence.”

This section empowers the EFCC to accept, in lieu of prosecution, a sum of money, not exceeding the fine which would have been imposed upon the accused person if he were convicted. The provisions of Section 14(2) much like the provisions of Section 180(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act are different from plea bargain. As stated earlier, plea bargain may take the form of a charge bargain in which the accused pleads guilty to a lesser charge or a sentence bargain in which the accused agrees to plead guilty to the charge in exchange for a light sentence.

Plea bargain essentially has been part of our law because Section 189 of the CPC where an accused person is allowed to either enter a plea or say I am not pleading; he can either plead or refuse to plead, that is plea bargaining already. You see, we already have it in our laws. But still the application has not been understood all along but along the line there is nothing bad in plea bargaining if it is practiced in line with the rules and regulations laid down by those who invented it. And when you look at it, it is not just to save cost, it saves time of prosecution; it has the possibility of decongesting our prisons. It is not as if the accused should go. No, it allows for lesser offenses. In other words, he will still be punished and when that happens the offender’s name is on record so if he commits the offense again, it is not going to be a question of plea bargain, it’s going to be a question of strict law and strict punishment. So all these are involved but I want to believe that if it is well operated we will have one of best systems that can help us to decongest our prisons.

In most cases, I think we should be able to put in our system, structures that will enable easy execution so that we don’t have a situation where we have different judgements for different people.

I still want to believe that one of the problems we have has to do with the exposure of the law. It is not as if the law is new, it has been there in our system but the problem is that it has not be applicable to us. We have not been using it and now we must take that system along with educating members of the public.

I must tell you that even among lawyers, not just members of the public, there is very little knowledge about what plea bargain is all about.

As a matter of fact, I must tell you that we have a lot of challenges. You see, we must appreciate the fact that we have a lot of cases on our hands as prosecutors in the country; we have constitutional cases, we have a lot of other cases, of course there is a limit to which we can go. We have constitutional limit, we are just trying to see where we can make some amendments. One essential thing about prosecution is an independent mind to prosecute.

It is a three-way traffic. We have delays occasioned by the prosecutors, we have the delay occasioned by the defence counsel and of course we have delay occasioned by the court but in most cases you can’t place the issue of delay solely on prosecutors.