RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LAW OF EVIDENCE AND PROCEDURE RELATING TO CRIMINAL TRIALS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The administration of justice is concerned, principally, with establishing a system of fairness in the approach of judicial bodies saddled with the responsibility of determining right and wrong between individuals, entities or between individuals and entities. Whether it will be regarded as equality of privileges or of rewards, or with Plato, as a harmony of interests, justice in every case gets its meaning from adjustments of real or putative dissensions. Thus, adjustment, harmonization, concordance, are the product and character of active justice, while correlative passive quality is the virtue of obedience-obedience to the law, human or divine, the recognition and observance of rights. This work seeks to highlight some recent Nigerian enactments which, through adjustment of older enactments, pushed further the high ideals of active justice in Nigeria. There are basically two major developments in the near past that have shaped the law of evidence in Nigeria and have indeed injected new ideas into the administration of criminal justice. These developments have been introduced through the enactment of the Evidence Act 2011 and the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015. This work considers some of the salient provisions of these two statutes and also briefly comments on recent decisions of superior courts record including the Supreme Court of Nigeria in these regards. The two pieces of legislation that have impacted on this field of criminal justice administration are carefully explored hereunder.