The Concept Of ‘manslaughter’ Under English And Nigerian Laws: Resolving Corporate Manslaughter And Jurisdictional Doctrinal Ambiguities

Abstract

The general principles of criminal law with regard to offences against the human body provided serious homicide offences against the human body such as ‘murder and manslaughter.’ The paper critically looked at the different definitions of manslaughter in the Nigerian Criminal Code, Penal Code on the one hand as well as the English Homicide Act,on the other hand. In order to achieve this, the paper considered subsisting judicial authorities pivoted and focused on the portions of the provisions of the Nigerian criminal and penal codes, altogether forming, the underpinning of the ‘homicide legislations’ in Nigeria. Consequent on the comparative investigation of the homicide legislations, the paper strived to ascertain the effect of the application of the doctrine of homicide in the Nigerian and British jurisdictions and ipso facto arrived at a better application of the doctrine of manslaughter in the Nigerian legal climate. The authors argued that manslaughter is specie of the genius ‘homicide.’ The investigative effort to resort to judicial authorities in this discourse leaves us with no option of agreeing that the Nigerian judiciary, in the exercise of their constitutional jurisdictions provided by section 6 of the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria (CFRN) 1999, have drawn and elucidated on the definition of manslaughter, more particularly ‘homicide’ as contained in the statute books. But beyond this, there is need to extend the definition of manslaughter to corporations. The authors therefore concluded by maintaining the process of continuous elucidation on the doctrine of homicide, more particularly ‘corporate manslaughter’ which has rendered the ‘inherent doctrinal difficulty less problematic,’ both in nature and scope of comprehension.