Investigate Before Arrests - CJN Urges Security Agents

The Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, has

charged security agencies to ensure that investigations into fraud and other criminal cases were properly carried out before charges are filed against suspects.

The CJN, who also discouraged filing too many counts of charges against suspects, advised that security agencies’ approached to prosecute offenders should be investigation-led arrest and not arrest-led investigation.

According to his media aide, Mr. Ahuraka Isah, the CJN stated this while receiving some officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, who paid him a courtesy visit over the weekend.

The CJN was quoted as saying, “Judiciary is like a builder, and works with materials that are brought to it. As such, the materials necessary for construction must measure up to standard in order to be applied by the courts.

“Court cannot carry out investigation and our security agencies must be encouraged to carry out investigation-led arrest and not arrest-led investigation.”

While discouraging the filing of many counts of offences against suspects, Justice Mohammed asserted that, “each count requires a witness or more,” adding that, “In some cases, up to 200 counts are brought before the court which is a waste of court’s time and makes mockery of the constitution and the laws.”

The CJN further disclosed that the Supreme Court had come up with a practice direction that would ensure money laundering and fraud cases were fast-tracked, expressing the hope, “that soon, Nigeria will become a major destination for the movement of capital and investment.”

The media aide noted that the CBN’s Deputy Governor (Operations), Alhaji Suleiman Barau, led some members of the Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum to visit the CJN.

He said Barau told the CJN that his team’s visit was “in anticipation of increase in electronic fraud attempts with imminent increase in electronic payments in the country following the take-off of the then ‘Cash-less Lagos’ pilot project.”

Isah quoted Barau as informing the CJN that electronic payment system industry losses had grown to over N4bn giving credence to the fact that “e-fraud has become an industry of its own.”

He stressed that the CJN told the CBN team that the problem with adjudication on criminal cases had to do with, “investigation, collection of evidence, presentation of the cases,” all of which the CJN said were outside the control of the court.

Barau recommended that some courts should be dedicated to banking and financial matters.