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High Court · 1961
Can a person be convicted of conduct that no written law defines as an offence?
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This decision is reported in the Nigerian law reports. Locate it by its case name in a law report series or through the court's own record, and read the judgment before relying on it.
The question the court actually had to answer. Everything a judgment settles flows from this, and nothing beyond it does.
Can a person be convicted of conduct that no written law defines as an offence?
A woman was convicted by a customary court of adultery, which was treated as an offence in the local customary setting.
The conviction was challenged on the ground that adultery was not an offence under any written law applying to her.
The conviction was set aside.
The court held that a person cannot be convicted of an offence unless that offence is defined, and its penalty prescribed, in a written law.
Stated narrowly, as the case is genuinely cited for — not stretched into the broader proposition it is often summarised as.
There is no criminal offence in Nigeria except one created by a written law that also prescribes its punishment.
Our explanation of what the decision means for an ordinary reader. It is not the judgment.
You cannot be punished for breaking a rule that was never written down as a crime. Somebody's disapproval — even a whole community's — is not a criminal offence.
This is the reason a police officer, a landlord, an employer or a neighbour cannot invent an offence and have you punished for it. If nobody can point at the written law and the punishment it sets, there is no crime.
The part most summaries leave out, and the part that most often causes a case to be cited for something it never decided.
Named generally. Read the official text of any instrument you intend to rely on.
This decision is reported in the Nigerian law reports. Locate it by its case name in a law report series or through the court's own record, and read the judgment before relying on it.
Subject area: Criminal Law