Facility for Defence

If the Appellant strongly wanted some facilities which were not made available to him, he would have applied formerly to the trial Court for an order compelling the Respondent to make available those facilities which he required for his defence. In the passage which I reproduced elsewhere in this judgment in the case of Ebele Okoye v C.O.P (Supra) which learned counsel for the Appellant cited and placed so much reliance upon, this Court clearly stated that any request for facilities necessary for the preparation of the defence of an accused must be made to the Court.

NWEKE v. STATE LGC(13/4/2017) B – C

The accused persons all filed individual appeals against the judgment of the lower Court. In a unanimous decision by a full panel of this Court, the appeal was allowed. It was held inter alia at pages 300-301 F-C: “The moment an accused person is facing a charge, his personal liberty is at stake and before that liberty is taken away, he must be afforded every opportunity to defend himself. It is immaterial whether he elects to be tried summarily or on information.
Once he becomes aware that he has a charge hanging over his neck for an infraction of the law and makes a request either orally or in writing, for any facilities to prepare for his defence, the Court must accede to his request and the prosecution has to comply… when a person is accused of an offence and requests for facilities to enable him prepare his defence, and the facilities in question are statements of witnesses, it will suffice if the prosecution makes available, photocopies of the statements.
The Court below was clearly in error when it made the election of the appellant to be tried on information as a condition precedent to exercising his right to request for facilities to prepare for his defence.”
The Court also interpreted the word “facilities” as contained in Section 36 (6) (b) of the Constitution, as follows (at page 296 E-F): “The facilities that must be afforded the accused person are the “resources” or “anything which would aid” the accused person in preparing his defence to the crimes for which he is charged.
These, no doubt, include the statement of witnesses interviewed by the Police in the course of their investigation which might have absolved the accused of any blame or which may assist the accused to subpoena such favourable witnesses that the prosecuting counsel may not want to put forward to testify.” – PER KUDIRAT MOTONMORI OLATOKUNBO KEKERE-EKUN, J.S.C.