DPA welcomes a major legal development in Ghana regarding discretionary police detention period, and to seek to introduce similar development in Nigeria

Ghana’s Supreme Court just rendered a far reaching but straightforward judgment, declaring that the 48 hours allowed the police to detain a person without court order shall now include weekends, holidays and even periods of civil unrest.

A similar development in Nigeria will significantly improve the human rights situation in Nigeria, which is currently deplorable. The Nigerian police organizations have abused the constitution by always excluding weekends and public holidays in the computation of the 48-hour period, similarly provided for in the Nigerian constitution.

The effect of this wrong computation method is that it became an instrument of corruption and abuse. The police will prefer to arrest people on Fridays so they can detain them over the weekend without consequences. For instance, in this Christmas period, assuming that Nigerian Government declares Friday 27th December a public holiday, Nigerian police can arrest a person on Tuesday, 24th December 2019 and detain him till Friday, 3rd January, 2020, and the period of such detention will be calculated as not exceeding the 48-hour period of discretionary police detention. The absurdity and injustice in such a system is glaring and highly intolerable.

DPA has for some time now been seeking for ways to challenge that unjust practice. The aforementioned development in Ghana will help DPA in that it sets a precedent of how another country on the same developmental plain and within the same geopolitical zone as Nigeria has handled the same problem.

DPA will be instructing its legal team to file an action in Nigerian courts by January of 2020 to obtain a judicial interpretation of the relevant constitutional provision. We shall be setting up a team of lawyers to study the Ghanaian case very closely and make recommendations to our litigation team.

DISCLAIMER:

The Due Process Advocates Foundation (DPA) is an international human rights and humanitarian organization, founded by Ephraim  Emeka Ugwuonye