Extraction of Confessional statements: The suspects and the criminal justice in Nigeria

Dr. Titilayo Abosede Dairo's Extraction of Confessional Statements - The Suspects and the Criminal Justice in Nigeria is a timely debut in the space of criminal prosecutions in Nigeria. The agencies saddled with criminal prosecutions in Nigeria - the Nigerian Police, the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and that of each of the states of the Federation, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) and a myriad of others - actively engage in the prosecution of criminal defendants. One mode of securing convictions is reliance on the confessional statement of a defendant facing a criminal charge. Many of these agencies actively participate in the investigation that will eventually lead to prosecution. In the course of taking the suspects' statements, they employ many inhuman and degrading modus operandi to force statements out of the suspects.

Dr. Dairo's book is, to the best of my knowledge, a new product on the subject-matter of forcefully obtained confessional statements in the Nigerian criminal justice process. She has adroitly compared the Nigerian criminal justice system with that of the United Kingdom in order to clearly sift out the wheat from the chaff and make appropriate recommendations for the Nigerian police and other criminal law investigative agencies for a saner criminal justice system.

The author pertinently drew on the provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 as well as those of the Police Act 2004 in her scholarly analysis of the nature, types and methods of obtaining confessional statements from criminal suspects in Nigeria. The author's synthesis of these statutory provisions vis-à-vis the provisions of some relevant international convention(s) is commendably beneficial to the treatise.

The book is, therefore, an essential manual for all agencies and officers involved in the investigation and administration of criminal cases in Nigeria, particularly the arduous aspect of obtaining the extra-judicial statements of criminal suspects. Judges, prosecutors and criminal defence counsel, among other stakeholders in the investigation and administration of criminal justice system will also find the book useful.