Speakers of 36 State Assemblies to Meet on Adoption of Criminal Justice Act
The speakers of the 36 states of the Houses of Assembly will meet in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, today and tomorrow to deliberate on the newly enacted Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 with a view to adopting and domesticating the law in their respective states.
The Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 was signed into law by the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan on May 14, 2015 and so far, only four states of the federation; Lagos, Anambra, Ondo and Ekiti, have legislated on it.
In a statement issued yesterday by the Outreach Communications Officer of United Nations Office on Drug and Crime(UNODC) Mr. Sylvester Tunde Atere, a copy of which was made available to journalists in Ilorin said the event would be jointly organised by UNODC and the Kwara State House of Assembly.
The ceremony will be declared open by the state Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, while extensive deliberation on the salient sections of the already developed Model Act is expected.
It is expected that the august gathering would lay the roadmap for a fast-tracked legislative steps towards the state-level adoption of the Act.
The statement said some of the key reform areas that the Act introduced are related to the time limit it sets for carrying out investigations, arraignment, and prosecution of criminal suspects; the requirement of the police to record every confessional statement given by a suspect to the police in video or the need for the statement to be endorsed by a legal practitioner thereby putting on check the incidents of use of force or torture to compel suspects to confess crimes that they perhaps did not commit.
The law further mandates the police to maintain a central criminal records registry, which is an essential tool for effective crime management in the country.
Police commissioners at the federal and state levels would be required under the law to submit to the Attorneys-General of the states or federation as the case may be, quarterly reports of persons arrested, released on bail or refused bail, the bail conditions, as well as those charged to court for prosecution.