EVALUATING SOME OF THE DEFENDANT’S RIGHTS UNDER THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN NIGERIA

Abstract

There are several rights in existence for the defendant under the Nigeria Criminal Justice administration. Most of these rights are unknown to the defendant. This often presents the defendant as a helpless victim of the wheel of justice. It is often said that to secure a conviction in Nigeria’s accusatorial criminal justice system is akin to the treading the proverbial horse through the needle’s eye. This work therefore aims at evaluating some of these rights with a view to presenting the advantages available to a defendant in the criminal justice system. Much reliance is placed on doctrinal methodology leveraging on rich data in Nigeria criminal jurisprudence. This work highlights that the prosecution bears more burden in the Nigerian criminal justice administration. It is believed that at the end of this work, a criminal defendant will no longer be seen as helpless but as a man imbued with several rights constitutionally guaranteed in order to ensure that the proverbial innocent person is not fed through the wheels of justice while seeking to convict the actual guilty person.