FRN v Akaeze: Criminal Investigation Simplified

Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN

One fateful night in 2012, there was a loud bang on the door of this mid­dle-aged man who had just moved to his house in the Lekki area. He was jolted from his deep sleep and before he could say Jack, four hefty men jumped into his bedroom, all hooded and wielding what looked like guns at the time. They asked him to lie on the floor and close his eyes. One of them asked him for his money, his ATM Card and pin, his watch­es and his gold or his life. Another one threatened to defile his wife if he failed to cooperate with them. He had no choice in this matter, as he never prepared for this in­vasion. In shock and panic, he led them to all items of value in his house, begging them to be mer­ciful and to harm no one. The in­vaders ransacked all the rooms in his house and carted away most of his valuable assets. The trau­ma lasted well over two hours. He could not access anyone for help because they also took away his telephones. When it was daytime, he managed to gather himself to­gether and made his way to the nearest police station, where he narrated his painful ordeal to the police and pleaded for help to ap­prehend the criminals. Through the way he described his night visitors, their style of operation and the general conduct of the dastardly raid, the police were well familiar with the robbery. They immediately set out to track the criminals through the iPhone of the victim, which was taken as part of the loot. The police even­tually traced the iPhone to a mar­ket around town and they arrest­ed the person who had custody of the telephone and through him, they were able to trace many of the invaders. Initially, they denied involvement in the crime but af­ter days of thorough beating and ceaseless torture, they confessed and gave the police the whole sto­ry of how it happened. But this did not come easy, as their ring leader had been to the German Cell, a special torture chamber within the police station. There, he was hung upside down and a tire put round his head, with the threat to set him ablaze at night. He was already very frail, having been shot in the leg when he tried to escape during the period of his arrest. He had fainted many times during his gruelling sessions in the German Cell before he finally decided to open up to the police.

The police then conducted sev­eral sessions of interviews with all the suspects and most of them wrote confessional statements of how they planned the robbery at­tack and executed it. After about three months of detention, the families of the suspects were able to trace them to the police station. Their application for bail was declined by the police given the gravity of the offence committed. The family eventually secured the services of a lawyer who filed an application for bail in court. Upon serving the application for bail on the Ministry of Justice and the police legal department, they demanded for the case file for review. The application for bail was opposed and given the copious counter-affidavit filed by the prosecution, the mind of the court weighed against it and the defendants were denied bail. The case thereafter proceeded to trial. The investigating police officer who was the first witness for the prosecution, attempted to tender the confessional state­ments of the defendants. Counsel to one of the defendants raised an objection to the admissibility of the confessional statement, argu­ing that it was obtained under du­ress. The court conducted a trial within trial, at the end of which it became clear that the defen­dants truly made their statements but some of them were tortured and battered by the police in the course of investigation. The court admitted the confessional state­ments of the defendants and even­tually convicted them at the end of the trial. Appeals were prose­cuted to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, wherein the decision of the trial court was upturned. In all, the case lasted about fourteen years. The above narration is only a fiction, de­picting some of the happenings within the law enforcement agen­cies in Nigeria. In promulgating the Administration of Criminal Justice Act in 2015, the National Assembly addressed the issue of confessional statements by in­cluding provisions which require investigators to give the defen­dant the opportunity of having his counsel witness the process of obtaining his statement with video evidence of the session. This was not complied with by many investigators and there have been different interpreta­tions by different courts of the true intention of the parliament. This has now been resolved by the Supreme Court in the case of Charles Akaeze and other cases. The facts of the case and the de­cision of the Supreme Court are well captured in a report of the Nigerian Law Publications as FRN v Akaeze (2024) 12 NWLR (Pt.1951) 1. In that case, the re­spondent and two other persons were arraigned before the trial Federal High Court on a two-count charge of conspiracy and failure to declare the sum of $102,885 (One Hundred and Two Thousand and Eighty-Five United States of America Dollars) to the Nigeria Customs Service at the Murtala Muhammed Internation­al Airport, Lagos, contrary to Sec­tions 2(3), 8(5) and 18 of the Mon­ey Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) by Act No. 1 of 2012. In the course of the trial, the prosecution sought to tender the extra-judicial statements of the respondent through the prosecu­tion witness. But the appellant objected to the admissibility of the statements on the ground that the extra-judicial statements were confessional statements made involuntarily and without complying with Sections 15(4) and 17(2) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015. The trial court therefore ordered a trial-within-trial. After the tri­al-within-trial proceedings, the trial court delivered its ruling. It found that the respondent wrote his extrajudicial statements on the first day he was taken into custody, and that there was no evidence the respondent was tor­tured, forced, or coerced to make the statements as he alleged. The trial court also held that the ex­tra-judicial statements were rel­evant, voluntarily made in line with the law. Therefore, the trial court admitted the extra-judicial statements in evidence. The re­spondent appealed to the Court of Appeal against the ruling of the trial court. The Court of Appeal held that the extra-judicial state­ments of the respondent should be rejected in evidence because the provisions of Sections 15(4) and 17(2) of Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 were not complied with in taking the statements. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, set aside the ruling of the trial court, and re­mitted the case to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court for re-assignment to another Judge for hearing and determination.

The appellant appealed to the Supreme Court. In determining the appeal, the Supreme Court considered the provisions of Sec­tions 15(4) and 17(2) of the Admin­istration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 which state as follows:

“15(4) Where a suspect who is arrested with or without a war­rant, volunteers to make a con­fessional statement, the police officer shall ensure that making and taking of the statement shall be in writing and may be record­ed electronically on a compact disc or some other audio-visual means.

17(2) Such statement may be taken in the presence of a Legal Practitioner of his choice, or where he has no Legal Practi­tioner of his choice, in the pres­ence of an officer of the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria or an officer of a Civil Society Organisation or a Justice of the Peace or any other person of his choice, pro­vided that the Legal Practitioner or any other person mentioned in this subsection shall not interfere while the suspect is making his statement except for the purpose of discharging his role as a Legal Practitioner.”

On purpose of Administration of Criminal Justice Act, at page 21, paras. E-G:

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“As I aptly postulated in the sister appeal (SC/353/C/2019), the fundamental purpose necessitat­ing the enactment of the Admin­istration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) supra, has been unequiv­ocally provided in Section 1 of the Act itself:

‘1(1) The purpose of this Act is to ensure that the system of Administration of Criminal Jus­tice in Nigeria promotes efficient management of criminal Institu­tions, speedy disposing of justice, protection of the society from crime and protection of rights and interests of the suspect; the defendant; and the victim.’

The courts, law enforcement agencies and other authorities or persons involved in this Crim­inal Justice Administration shall ensure compliance with the pro­visions of this Act for the realiza­tion of its (2) purposes.’

We lose nothing in ensuring strict compliance with ACJA in this regard. It guarantees the transparency of the process be­cause the video evidence itself cannot possibly be contested by the defendant, being a true re­flection of what transpired at the statement recording session. It also saves the prosecution the burden of proof of voluntariness of confessional statements. The purpose of enacting ACJA should not be defeated by investigators.

On Mischief rule of interpre­tation of statutes at page 21, pa­ras. B-D:

“One of the fundamental guidelines to interpretation of statutes is the mischief rule, which considers the state of the law prior to the enactment, the defect which the statute sets out to eradicate or prevent, the rem­edy adopted by the legislature to cure the mischief, and the actual reason behind the remedy.”