YESTERDAY, the author discussed Section 1 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State 2015 and the purpose of the law. Today, he takes on prostitution and the criminal laws of Lagos State. He will also discuss jumping of bail by a suspect and its consequences for the surety.
By Chidi Okoye
I got home from work, exhausted. I dropped the case file of the mob attack on my reading table, hoping to go through it after a nap. My wife walked up to me just then.
“Why are your kind so heartless and not at all considerate with regards to the present hash condition the country is in?”
“Babe, what is the problem?” I asked, surprised.
“The Police arrested Kemi last night, and this morning they are trying to take her to court.”
Let me pause and talk a bit about Kemi.
She is Bola’s younger sister. Bola was my wife’s best friend, until she died in a car accident, which also claimed the life of their father. Kemi had lost her mother five years ago. She was slowly recovering from the shock when her only sibling, and her dad, died in an accident a year ago. Since then, she had been staying with us.
She had finished her youth service in an investment bank that offered her a job. But she turned down the job because she felt the salary was too small, compared to what she got from her male admirers.
Kemi was strikingly beautiful, which practically made her any man’s dream. Most men had given a lot to have her – a gesture that she began exploiting after one of her admirers bought her a car.
I remembered the last time my wife tried advising her to settle down with one of her admirers, but it didn’t end well, as both ended up exchanging hurtful words. She even moved out of our apartment. I had to step in to resolve the matter, and ever since, she had been free to move from one guy to the next, but she never allowed the guys to come to our place.
My wife gave me the phone number of the IPO in charge of her case, and I quickly put a call through to her. The IPO told me Kemi was arrested in the midst of five other prostitutes, somewhere in Lekki, where the landlords’ association had petitioned the Area Commander, stating their displeasure at how ladies moved around at night, half-naked.
They also added that their conduct attracted drug peddlers and criminals that wanted to have fun. That was why the police started raiding the prostitutes. Prostitution is an offence in the criminal laws of Lagos State.
I confirmed the section that labelled prostitution as an offence in the law book. But my wife, out of passion, put up an argument that if there was no prostitution, the level of rape, which is a capital offence, would be high, and that if a lady chose to sell her private part to the public, what was the government’s business with that. But she was coming from the point of emotion, which, in most cases, contradicts the Principle, Section 4 of the criminal laws about application of general principle of the law, and it applies to any offence under this law.
My wife was looking at the fact that it was poor economic condition that made Kemi live that lifestyle, and that no one was harmed by her conduct. But so long as it was listed as an offence, no matter how harmless Kemi was while at it, the fact remains that it is an offence in this law book, and as such the general principle of the law must be applied, same way it would be applied in an offence that affects the interest of an individual.
Kemi was charged to court, and was found guilty of attempt to prostitute, and not prostitution, because the element to gain conviction for prosecution was not presented as exhibit.
Rather than face prison sentences, stipulated for the offence of prostitution, the magistrate was considerate enough to give her two hundred and twenty-four hours of community service, meaning she was asked to sweep a government facility for ten days. The same punishment was handed dawn to the rest of the ladies that were arrested with her.
Section 5: Classification of offence
It was a Monday morning. My departmental head, Superintendent Muhamed Ibim, PA to the AIG Force Criminal Investigation Department, Alagbon, requested I meet him in his office. He was the officer that convinced the AIG to redeploy me from State CID to FCID.
We go back a long way. As a matter of fact, we were both squared mates at the Police Academy, where we trained together as Cadet Inspectors. This was the first time I would be working with my course mates in the same section.
Yes, SP. Mohamed was not the only course mate in the section. DSP. Bologi Abdul was also there. He was the reason Mohamed had requested for me. He pleaded with me to fill in for Bologi who had traveled to Abuja for a case, which would take him some days to perfect and incidentally he was posted for incident duty, which is a duty most senior officers perform once a month.
Basically, you don’t do much, it’s just a twenty-four-hour duty where you are expected to attend to any incident that comes up within the hours of the duty.
The hard part of the duty starts when the AIG goes home and the incident duty officer assumes temporary duty of the AIG, because all complaints will be channelled to the incident duty officer, and this include the welfare of inmates in the cell.
Having agreed to fill in for Bologi, I called my wife to send over my uniform through dispatch. At 6PM I wore my uniform and visited ‘beat point’ in the Command, making sure they were at alert. The cell was the last place I visited; but the first time I visited the place, the cell guard opened the gates and I entered. We had only male cell, so I focused my attention on the male cell, which was divided into three sections.
The most secured section was called Felony Section. This cell facility housed criminals that were being investigated for felonious offences – that is, offences punishable by death, and imprisonment not less than three years. The inmates in this facility were properly secured. The offences inmates in the facility were detained for various crimes, including kidnapping, rape, armed robbery, murder, and other capital offences.
lt was night, and the cell guard suggested I count the inmates, without going into the cell, which we did. They were fifteen in number. The president in the cell smiled at the fact that I complied with the cell guard’s suggestion not to enter the cell.
‘Oga Olopa, are you afraid of us?” he asked, holding the bars of the cell gate.
The cell guard gave him a mischievous smile before threatening to electrocute him with a shock baton, which he brought near the iron bar.
The criminal backed off.
We stepped out of that section of the cell and moved to the next section, which was labelled Misdemeanour Section. This section housed inmates suspected to have committed an offence punishable with not less than six months in prison, but less than three years. From their conduct, compared to that of the inmates in the previous cell, you could tell that they were not hardened criminals, as their offences ranged from stealing, cheating, to other white-collar offences.
I entered their cell and conducted a head count. They were nineteen in number. I was about stepping out of the cell when one of them approached me and complained that he was detained because he took a suspect on bail, and when the IPO requested he bring the suspect, he learned ‘that the suspect had travelled out of the country.
His lawyer argued with the IPO that surety to show, cause’ is not an offence at the Police hierarchy, rather in court. I did not drag the matter with him. I simply requested they get me the criminal code, and I showed him a section talking about helping a suspect escape Police processing.
While we were at it I looked towards the last section of the cell called Simple Offence. It was empty. This cell was meant to house inmates with offences less than six months. I opened the incident duty dairy and recorded my observations. I repeated the process three times after I reported off duty. I went home, marvelled that the cell section was based on Section 5 of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State.
TOMORROW, the author will teach on the law, self-defense, and trespass.
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