Fair Hearing

The fair hearing provision in the Constitution is the machinery or locomotive of justice; not a spare part to propel or invigorate the case of the user. It is not a casual principle of law available to a party to be picked up at will in a case and force the Court to apply it to his advantage. On the contrary, it is a formidable and fundamental constitutional provision available to a party who is really denied fair hearing because he was not heard or that he was not properly heard in the case. Let litigants who have nothing useful to advocate in favour of their cases, leave the fair hearing constitutional provision alone because it is not available to them just for the asking.

ALHAJI AMINU JUBRILLAH ABDULLAHI & ORS v. MRS. CHRISTIANA IYABO ADETUTU.(LGC(/12/4/2019)N

The test of determining whether there was a fair hearing in criminal cases is always the impression of a reasonable man listening and present in Court. In the instant case, where the appellant's reply on points of law was excluded, no reasonable man present in Court would admit that he was given a fair hearing. What then is the effect of lack of fair hearing on the decision of the trial Court. It is very clear that where an accused person is convicted in absence of fair trial, the conviction and sentence are defective, null and void and should be so declared on appeal. The trial will be as though nothing has taken place. See Yusuf v State (2011) 18 NWLR (Pt. 1279) 853 at 870; Effiom v State (1995) 1 NWLR (pt 373) 507; Madu v State (1997) 1 NWLR (Pt. 482) 386.

As already shown above, once there is a breach of the right of fair hearing, the whole proceedings in the course of which the breach occurred and the decision arrived at by the Court become a nullity. Audu v FRN (2013) LPELR -19897 (SC) 13; D-F; Akinfe v. The State (1988) 3 NWLR (pt. 85) 729, 753;Bamgboye v. University of Ilorin [1999] 10 NWLR (Pt. 622) 290, 333. Even then, the effect of such a denial would be more critical in a criminal case, [in the instant case, the offence charged was armed robbery], Adebisi v State (2014) LPELR -22694 (SC) 40; A-C.