Admission of an offence by an accused person to other persons may amount to sufficient corroboration in law. So in R. v. Francis Kufi (1960) WNLR 1, the accused was charged with indecent assault against a young girl of 10 years. It was held, and rightly in my view, that the admission of the offence by the accused to the father of the girl was sufficient corroboration in law.
— Iguh, JSC. Okon Iko v State (2001) – SC.177/2001
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Under section 32 of the Cap. 208 above, if the 1st defendant was of the view that the plaintiff had committed an offence under section 24 above, all it could do was to give information in writing through its speaker to the Attorney-General of the Federation so that the plaintiff could be prosecuted. Having determined that the plaintiff had committed an offence against it, the duty which the law imposes on the 1st defendant was clear. There was nothing left to it or its committee to further investigate, once a determination was made that an offence had been committed.
– Oguntade, JCA. El-Rufai v. House of Representatives (2003)
An accused person charged for an offence can only be charged under the law that creates the offence. Such a law must be in force at the time the offence was committed. There is no provision in our Constitution to charge an accused person under a law that was not in existence at the time the conduct complained of manifested, or to create an offence to crirnimalise a conduct after the act. A trial conducted under a law that has been repealed, no matter how well conducted and decided is a nullity. See Ogbomor v. State (1985) 1 NWLR (Pt.2) p.223.
– Rhodes-Vivour, JSC. Nwankwoala v FRN (2018) – SC.783/2015
“11. At law where facts are admitted or not traversed in the pleadings, a party is not obliged to lead any further evidence. The documents on which the plaintiff relied on in this proceeding were all admitted by the defendant who also relied on all those documents as well as her own. In such an instance, it is not necessary for the plaintiff to provide oral evidence to prove these facts as they are admitted by the defendant. Thus, defendant’s contention that plaintiff did not provide evidence to substantiate his claims and should be deemed to have waived them is not acceptable in law and so same is respectfully rejected by the Court.”
— Ayika v Liberia (2012) – ECW/CCJ/JUD/09/12
I now come to consider the class of criminal cases in which corroboration is required to prove the guilt of the accused. It is common ground that in all cases where the law provides that corroboration is necessary, a conviction of an accused can only be valid when there is such corroborative evidence. That is the case where statutory corroboration is required. But there are other cases in which though there is no statutory requirement for corroboration, yet as a matter of practice, corroboration though not essential, is almost always required before conviction. The latter is mostly in cases of evidence on oath. Any witness in any of these categories would conveniently be regarded as “suspect” witness and that is why the law requires that if any conviction is to be based on their evidence, the Judge must warn himself or the jury as the case may be, of the danger of convicting on the uncorroborated evidence of such witness. Lord Diplock in D.P.P. v. Hester (supra) explained the danger sought to be cleared by this rule when he said on P.244 of the report that:- ‘The danger sought to be obviated by the common law rule in each of these three categories of witnesses is that the story told by the witness may be inaccurate for reasons not applicable to other competent witnesses, whether the risk be of deliberate inaccuracy, as in the case of accomplices, or unintentional inaccuracy, as in the case of children and some complainants in cases of sexual offences. What is looked for under the common law rule is confirmation from some other source that the suspect witness is telling the truth in some part of his story which goes to show that the accused committed the offence with which he is charged.’
— Kalgo, J.S.C. Okon Iko v State (2001) – SC.177/2001
Thus, where both parties have agreed on a fact in issue, no further proof of such fact was necessary as it ceases to be an issue between them:-See Chief Okparaeke of Ndrakaeme & Ors. V. Egbuonu & Ors. (1941) 7 W.A.C.A. 53. In Chief Nwizuk & Ors. v,. Eneyok & Ors. (1953) 14 W.A.C.A. 354, it was held that admissions under this section are not confined to written nor documentary admissions. They include oral admissions if made clearly in open court during the proceedings. Admissions may also be by implication where there is a failure positively to deny an allegation. In Hill V Hogg (1854) 4 Allen (New Brunswick) R 108 it was held that an admission and a confession to the commission may be given in evidence in proof of an imputation.
— Karibe-Whyte, JSC. Din v. African Newspapers (1990)
Thus, where such evidence is by error or otherwise admitted, then it is the duly of the trial court to expunge it in giving its judgment. If it fails to do so, the appeal court will reject such evidence and consider the case in the light of the legally admitted evidence See Owoniyi v. Omotoso (1961) 2 SCNLR 57, (1961) All NLR 304; Alase v. Ilu (1964) 1 All NLR 390. In any event, it is trite that wrongful admission of inadmissible evidence is not of itself a ground for the reversal of any decision. Similarly, the wrongful exclusion of admissible evidence is not of itself a ground for the reversal of any decision. All these are however dependent on the view held by the appeal court on whether the evidence wrongly admitted or wrongly excluded would have the effect of changing the decision even if admitted or excluded.
— I.T. Muhammad JSC. Musa Abubakar v. E.I. Chuks (SC.184/2003, 14 DEC 2007)
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