- Judge frees robbery suspects due to shoddy prosecution
The lamentation of Justice D. D. Longji of the Plateau State High Court, with respect to the negligent prosecution of two armed robbery suspects should worry every citizen and thoroughly embarrass the state’s attorney-general and the police authorities. Considering the general level of insecurity in the state, arising from insurgency, communal clashes and banditry, etc., it amounts to stoking the fire of insecurity, for prosecutorial authorities to treat armed robbery cases with levity.
In his open lamentation of helplessness, the judge had said to the two armed robbery suspects: “I am discharging you and it is with a heavy heart; I am discharging you not based on merit, but because my hands are tied.” We are shocked that a judge can be clearly overwhelmed in his own court, but that appears the fate of Justice Longji, for he further said: “I have no reason to hold you because the prosecution has not diligently prosecuted the matter and seem uninterested in it.” Such a travesty of justice is an embarrassment to the prosecutorial power of the police and it should be reviewed.
A legal system in any part of our country that renders a judge impotent and helpless, as in the instant case, is an embarrassment to the entire criminal justice system. We have repeatedly called for a review of the present system where a state crime like armed robbery, is investigated by a federal agency, and as we have seen in Plateau State, also prosecuted by them. And if for any reason the federal authority is either not interested in a diligent prosecution or has even been compromised for whatever reason, the state suffers the consequences.
The inefficiency foisted by the police in this case is not a one-off thing, especially with regards to prevention, investigation and prosecution of crimes. We acknowledge that the problem sometimes may be beyond the particular police officer in question, considering that he or she serves at the pleasure of his superiors. With a command structure sometimes even beyond the control of even a state commissioner of police, the investigating police officer or the prosecutor can be transferred at very short notice, without care about the cases they may be handling.
In the case of the two robbery suspects, we urge the state attorney-general to step in and ensure justice for the state. We are even surprised that a case of armed robbery is left to the designs of a police prosecutor. In most states, the job of the police prosecutor is merely to forward a report of the investigation to the director of public prosecutions in the state, for legal advice, as the police are not empowered to prosecute such an offence. We also urge the police to conduct an enquiry, to find out whether the prosecutor was negligent in the discharge of his duties.
For us, what is of paramount interest is to gift the country and its component parts a working criminal justice system. We also wonder if a system can be put in place to enable the judge complain directly to the state attorney-general, or the prosecutor’s superiors, to call him to order. Such helplessness as expressed by Justice Longji must not be allowed to happen again in any part of the country. Anyone who offends the law anywhere deserves to be brought to an efficient justice, more so, as the discharged culprits can easily move their nefarious activity to another state.
Let our inter-dependence not constitute a nuisance.
