ACJA
By Sylvester Thompson
Abuja, Dec.21, 2018(NAN) Mr Chukwu Emmanuel, a legal practitioner in the FCT has urged states that have not adopted the Administration of Criminal Justice Act(ACJA), to do so, to ensure that the criminal justice system becomes more efficient.
NAN reports that the Act, was enacted in 2015 at the federal level.
Lagos enacted its in 2011.
Other states like Anambra, Enugu and few others have adopted theirs in various forms.
NAN reports that 28 states have yet to comply with that reform.
“The remaining 28 states, must reform their criminal justice system and every state must key into this arrangement.
“That some states have not actually keyed in is one of the issues that is not good”, he said.
“We don’t have any uniform criminal law system pertaining to legal apparatus, statutory enactment when it comes to criminal law in Nigeria.’’
He noted that before the ACJA , states used the Criminal Procedure Act, (CPA) and the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), depending on whether such a state was created out of the former northern or southern region.
He said while the CPC was used for states across the north, the CPA was effective in the southern parts of the country.
“The ACJA was introduced to ensure that the criminal justice system becomes more efficient as well as responsive to the rights of the people.
“The provisions in the ACJA has come to bridge the inadequacies or lapses which the criminal law of those states could not provide,” he said.
He cited most of these lapses to include, the arbitrary arrest and detention of persons and plea bargain.
He said the FCT’s ACJA and Lagos ACJL are balanced with respect to the criminal law of jurisdictions.
He said to harmonise the criminal laws across the federation, the states which have different laws should copy those states which have imbibed the ACJA to balance their new criminal justice laws.
The lawyer added that an example of the state which has recently adopted its own ACJL is Enugu state.(NAN)
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edited by Sadiya Hamza