The Lagos State Government has received and treated over 230 requests for plea bargain in the last two years when the Plea Bargain Committee was set up in the Ministry of Justice.
The government had inculcated the plea bargain option in its Criminal Justice System as part of efforts to expedite actions on cases before the courts and decongest the prisons.
This emerged yesterday during a one-day workshop on plea bargaining organized by the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) programme, an EUDF-funded programme managed by the British Council.
The workshop was organized for media practitioners to build public support for the application and use of plea bargain in criminal cases in Lagos, Adamawa, Anambra, Kano and the FCT.
An Assistant Director in the Lagos state Ministry of Justice, Mrs. Bunmi Olugasa, said plea bargain has come to stay in Lagos, disclosing that all the requests received had been treated with 80 completed in court.
Olugasa who stood in for the Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General of the state, Mr. Adeniji Kazeem as well as the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Ms. Titilayo Shitta-Bey said the plea bargain option is all-encompassing as a request can be made on any criminal offence.
According to her, the state continues to encourage litigants to take advantage of the plea bargain as it saves the court system “the burden of conducting trial on every crime”.
“The concept of plea bargaining is not only for the rich. It is also for the poor. The system has come to stay”, Olugasa said.
She added that “Over the past two years, we have had sensitization programmes, going to not only the prisons. We have also gone to police stations because the first contact the defendants will have in the system is police. We have been to police stations to sensitize them that this option is also available”.
Hon. Justice Yetunde Adesanya in her presentation said the concept has put in place several checks and balances to prevent abuse, adding that “the court must ensure that both public interest and the course of justice is served in the process leading to the plea bargain agreement”.
A law teacher, Dr. Akeem Bello, said the plea bargain started in America as early as 1810 even as other countries have been experimenting with the system, saying it is not too late for Nigeria to entrench the practice in its criminal justice system.
