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“Ill-Legal” Constraints on the Exercise of Administrative Disciplinary Powers in Nigerian Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Kemi Odujirin
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Extract

Can a domestic tribunal or an administrative disciplinary committee try a person for a criminal offence? The answer is clearly no. But can such a tribunal, in the exercise of its disciplinary powers, try a person for misconduct even though the acts amounting to such misconduct are in the nature of criminal offences? The Nigerian Supreme Court has given a negative answer to this latter question. The aim of this short article is to show that the answer puts “ill-legal” constraints on the administrative disciplinary powers of such tribunals.

The history of the problem dates back to 1968. In Denloye v. Medical and Dental Practitioners' Disciplinary Tribunal, counsel for the plaintiff raised the issue of the competence of a disciplinary tribunal to try a person for acts alleged to amount to infamous conduct in a professional respect where the acts were in the nature of criminal offences. Although the court did not consider the issue, it nevertheless observed (in the typical fashion of regarding English law as a palimpsest of Nigerian law) that the practice under the English Medical Act, 1956 which was that allegations of unprofessional conduct in the nature of offences were not dealt with under the Act in the first instance but were left to the courts, and, after conviction, disciplinary actions would follow, was the intention in Nigeria.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of African Law , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1990 , pp. 128 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1990

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References

1 (1968) 1 All N.L.R. 306.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., at 312.

3 (1975) 4 S.C. 59.Google Scholar

4 (1981) 1 N.C.L.R. 135.Google ScholarAlso Garba v. University of Maiduguri (1986) 1 N.W.L.R. 550.Google Scholar

5 Defined by the regulations as“any offence involving fraud, dishonesty, or other moral turpitude”.

6 W.S.L.N. No. 68 of 1972.Google Scholar

7 See n. 5, above.

8 S. 33(4) 1979 Constitution.

9 S. 33(5) to (13) of the 1979 Constitution; (1981) 1 N.C.L.R. 135, at 146.Google Scholar

10 The rule in Smith v. Selwyn [1914] 3 K.B. 98.Google Scholar

11 Above at 146.

12 (1981) 1 N.C.L.R. 135 at 146.Google Scholar

13 U.S. v. Lefkwitz, 285 U.S. 452 (1932)Google Scholar, cited in Antieau, C. J., Constitutional Construction, London, 1982, 16.Google Scholar

14 Matter of Rouse, 221 N.Y. 81, 91,Google Scholar cited in Cardozo, B., The Growth of the Law, 112.Google Scholar

15 Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee v. Gani Fawehinmi, (1985) 2 N.W.L.R. 832 (S.C.)Google Scholar