Nigerian Criminal Justice System: An Examination of Victims’ Rights Approach to Effective Administration of Criminal Justice in Nigeria

Abstract

The Nigerian criminal justice system is adversarial. Like other similar systems, it is designed to accommodate only two parties, the prosecution, and the defendant, in the combative atmosphere of its trial process. There is no right of audience for victims to claim remedy for their injuries at the trial. They are only visible as witnesses for the State. Whereas the various domestic laws cater to the offender's rights, they are silent about the rights of the victim. The treatment of crime victims by the agencies of the Nigerian criminal justice causes them further traumatization due to a lack of protection. Consequently, the victims have been passive over the years over their feelings of being used and dumped by the Nigerian criminal justice system due to a lack of voice. There is, therefore, the need to chart a new course where the victim would have an equal voice as the offender. This paper accordingly investigates the views of scholars on the attitude and the dichotomous nature of adversarial criminal justice, where a criminal trial is seen as a combat between the State and the defendant, while the victim is only seen as an item of evidence. The study adopts doctrinal methodology, which reveals that a scholar's general view is for the system to put on the front burner the rights and interests of a crime victim to ensure its legitimacy.