Nigerians are incensed at the recent Supreme Court ruling in SUNDAY JACKSON V. STATE (SC/CR/1026/2022), which was handed down on March 7, 2025. In a case characterised by strict legalism, procedural violations, and a concerning disrespect for the fundamental right to self-defence, the supreme court failed to provide significant justice by upholding the death sentence imposed by the trial court. The judgement is critically examined in this essay, which contends that it is illogical, twisted, unscholarly, and completely unwarranted in both argument and conclusion. The judiciary is the final hope in a country where the foundations of governance are frequently shaken by winds of doubt. It is a symbol of justice, equity, and the unwavering belief that the truth can still triumph in Nigeria.
It is impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of judicial responsibility, especially at the Nigerian Supreme Court level. The Supreme Court is the highest court and the ultimate arbitrator of justice. It is also the protector of public rights, the ultimate defender of the Nigerian Constitution, and the legal interpreter. Its rulings not only settle personal conflicts but also influence the development of social order, national jurisprudence, and democratic integrity. Every subordinate court and all governmental institutions are affected by a single Supreme Court ruling, which establishes binding precedent. The highest standards of legal intelligence, moral rectitude, and unbiased deliberations free from politics, fear, favouritism, bias, or personal interest are required of its justices due to their lofty position.
The public’s trust in the Court’s knowledge, impartiality, and dedication to justice is what gives it its sanctity. The judiciary is the last resort for the average citizen, who turns to it when all other branches of government have failed. Therefore, a Supreme Court decision that is ill-reasoned or obviously biassed causes more than just harm to the parties involved; it also causes significant and long-lasting injury to the nation’s reputation. It undermines faith in the rule of law, encourages lawlessness in both high and low places, and plants the seeds of scepticism and disillusionment.
Even worse, inconsistent or politically biassed rulings undermine the legal system’s coherence, leaving litigants perplexed, lower courts uncertain, and attorneys lost. The Supreme Court’s role is made even more crucial in a country already beset by instability, corruption, and questioned democratic principles. Every decision it makes must be a lighthouse of justice, equity, and constitutional integrity because when justice fails at the top, the whole legal system collapses beneath it.
The Sunday Jackson Metaphor
Sunday Jackson is getting closer to having a chair knocked out from beneath him and a noose placed around his neck every day. His fate is weighed between the taste of freedom and the grasp of the executioner as he waits for a governor to sign. Due to the Supreme Court’s ruling and the wider ramifications it has for justice, equity, and the average Nigerian’s trust in the legal system, Jackson, a young farmer from Adamawa State, was found guilty and given the death penalty on Sunday. This has caused both legal and moral outrage. At the centre of this case is a man who lives in an area where the right to protect one’s life and land is frequently linked to survival, and where pastoralist herders and sedentary farmers have been engaged in violent conflict for years. From the High Court to the intermediate court and the Supreme Court, the majority of Nigerians think that the justice system failed Jackson.
Summary of Facts
SUNDAY JACKSON V. THE STATE (SUPRA)
The Supreme Court of Nigeria rendered a decision on March 7, 2025, that rocked the legal and civil society communities. The death sentence for Sunday Jackson, a local farmer from Adamawa State who was found guilty of killing Ardo Bawuro, a Fulani herdsman, during a violent altercation on his farm, was upheld by the supreme court. The case’s facts brought up important issues regarding justice, fairness, and the fundamental right to self-defence.
Jackson was charged after an incident that happened in Kodomti, Adamawa State’s Numan Local Government Area, at some point in 2018. Bawuro apparently confronted Jackson when he was out on his property harvesting thatching grass, accusing him of being complicit in the slaughter of his animals. There was a clash. Jackson claimed that Bawuro used a dagger to assault him. Jackson was able to disarm him during the ensuing battle and repeatedly stabbed Bawuro in the neck to defend himself. The herdsman’s wounds caused his death. Jackson escaped, but he was eventually caught and charged with culpable homicide, which carries a death sentence.
The Judgement And Some Legal Challenges
Jackson claimed self-defence, but the Adamawa State trial court and the Court of Appeal dismissed this claim and convicted him of murder in accordance with Section 221 of the Penal Code. In upholding this ruling, the Supreme Court found that Jackson’s use of force was needless and disproportionate after he disarmed his attacker, neutralising the threat. But there have been some who disagree with this line of thinking. Serious procedural issues are raised by the judgement, which was issued 167 days after the final written addresses, well beyond the 90-day constitutional period. The 1999 Constitution’s Section 294(1) stipulates that verdicts must be rendered no later than ninety days following the completion of arguments.
Legal scholars contend that prolonged delays undermine the legitimacy and legality of judgements, particularly in capital cases where human life is at risk, in addition to violating constitutional restrictions. The court’s understanding of self-defence was even more controversial. Jackson met only a portion of the legal requirements, even though the court acknowledged that self-defence is a full defence against murder. The ruling states that even though Jackson was in immediate danger and did not initiate the attack, he did not flee after disarming the dead. The court reasoned that after seizing the dagger, Jackson was no longer in immediate danger and should have fled rather than using lethal action in retaliation. This stance has drawn a lot of criticism for being idealistic and unrelated to the realities of violent interactions.
Jackson’s assertion was unambiguous and consistent: in the face of an unexpected, life-threatening threat, he moved instinctively to protect his life. The stabbing happened amid a violent altercation. At best it is speculative, and at worst it is a dangerous oversimplification of a clear and perfect risk to his life that he had a clear and safe opportunity to escape while engaged in combat with an armed adversary. The supreme court seemed to create an oversimplified mental model that was at odds with the unadulterated, disorderly character of actual violence.
The court’s disregard for the widely accepted theory of excessive self-defence under Section 222(2) of the Penal Code was the most concerning feature of the ruling. When someone dies while defending themselves with more force than is reasonably required, this clause turns a murder prosecution into manslaughter. Similar cases, like AS OKONKWO V STATE (1998) 4 NWLR 143 CA, recognised the importance of a person’s subjective response to intense pressure and anxiety. In Jackson’s case, the Supreme Court disregarded strong evidence indicating Jackson acted in a condition of dread and panic in favour of a purely objective test.
Sunday Jackson’s case serves as a sobering reminder of how legal inflexibility can exacerbate social inequality in a country beset by frequent and violent farmer-herder conflicts that are frequently caused by a breakdown in governmental security and law enforcement. The Nigerian Supreme Court had the chance to develop and clarify the country’s self-defence doctrine in order to bring it into line with moral common sense, constitutional protections, and human reality. In my honest opinion, it instead took a route that appears to be more focused on procedural details than on substantive justice.
In the end, justice must be done—and perceived to have been done—as the Supreme Court famously ruled. It seems that neither was the case with Sunday Jackson. Refer to R. V. SUSSEX JUSTICES EXPARTE MCCARTHY (1924) 1KB 256 at 259 and ADMINISTRATOR & EXECUTOR OF THE ESTATE OF ABACHA V. SAMUEL DAVID EKE-SPIFF & ORS (2009) LPELR – 3152.
Overview Of The Supreme Court Judgement: Points Of Concern
1. Procedural Irregularities and Constitutional Violations in judgment delivery
The court’s disregard for a basic procedural violation—the excessive delay in judgement delivery—is among the most obvious problems with the ruling. The Federal Republic of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution (as amended) stipulates in Section 294 (1) that courts must render decisions within ninety days of final addresses. In Jackson’s case, the judgement was not given until February 10, 2021, a startling 167-day wait, following final written submissions on August 27, 2020. In addition to violating the Constitution, this delay also violated the state’s Administration of Criminal Justice Law, which prohibits excessive delays in criminal proceedings. Justice postponed is justice denied, as the adage goes. Refer to the instances of DIAMOND BANK PLC v. SLIMPOT (NIG) LTD (2018) LPELR-41612 (CA) and COLLEGE OF EDUCATION EKIADOLOR & ORS V OBAYAGBONA (1028) LPELR-40154 (CA).
Such procedural errors are not ordinary technicalities when the life of an accused is on the line. A judgement rendered outside the bounds of the constitution is voidable, according to legal precedent and statutory regulations, particularly if it might constitute a miscarriage of justice. However, the Supreme Court decided to avoid this mistake and upheld a death sentence based on a flawed procedure. Beyond Jackson’s case, this error has ramifications because it erodes public trust in the judiciary’s capacity to enforce its own laws.
2. Misapplication of the Doctrine of Self-defence
Another concerning feature of the ruling is the Supreme Court’s limited and robotic interpretation of the self-defence doctrine. According to Jackson’s undisputed testimony, the dead, a herdsman with a dagger, assaulted him abruptly and forcefully. Following a physical altercation, Jackson disarmed the assailant and, in a fit of survival instinct, repeatedly stabbed him. Then Jackson ran away.
According to the court, Jackson should have fled after disarming his attacker because he was no longer in danger. This conclusion was hypothetical and unrelated to the practicalities of close-quarters self-defence. During a violent physical confrontation, the weapon was retrieved almost simultaneously with the fatal stabbing. The evidence did not support the court’s conclusion that Jackson had a reasonable chance to flee. It also disregarded Jackson’s current state of mental anguish and impending danger.
Even if Jackson used more force than was justified during the altercation, section 222(2) of the Penal Code makes it very evident that manslaughter, not murder, should be charged when excessive force employed in self-defence in good faith results in death. The court’s unsettling preference for technical rigidity over equitable and context-sensitive adjudication is demonstrated by its failure to take this statutory mitigation into account.
3. Failure of Substantial Justice and Misjudgment of Facts
A more serious judicial error is the Supreme Court’s handling of Jackson’s case, which substituted assumed scenarios for established facts. The mental image of a disarmed aggressor lying innocuously in front of a free and unarmed Jackson served as the foundation for the court’s analysis. This made-up incident runs counter to Jackson’s story, which told of a wrestling match in which he grabbed the weapon out of a desperate attempt to survive.
The crucial fact that Jackson and his assailant maintained physical touch during the ordeal was disregarded by the court. It would be ridiculous to assume that Jackson had the luxury of time or physical capability to disengage in such close quarters without first making sure he was safe by rendering his attacker incapacitated. The reasonable risk that the attacker may have regained the weapon or taken any other weapon within reach (such as a rock, tree branch, etc.) and attacked Jackson was also not taken into consideration by the court.
Respectfully, even the court’s suo motu investigation into the defence of provocation was conducted improperly. It acknowledged that Jackson behaved out of intense passion and under serious provocation, but it came to the incorrect conclusion that there was enough time for his passion to subside. According to Jackson’s confessional testimony, the timeline of events does not support this legal fiction.
The court rejected the defence of provocation, stating that Jackson’s fervour had subsided. However, how could it have? The entire affair occurred in a flurry of chaos, when emotion had not had time to cool down and reason had left its seat. This was a survival instinct rather than a planned or premeditated act of retaliation. And the law should be aware of that.
4. Failure of the Supreme Court to Take Judicial Notice of the lingering Farmer-Herder Crisis in Assessing the Defence of Self-Defence
The Supreme Court seems to have viewed the case in a vacuum, as if the incident occurred in a socially and historically neutral environment, when it upheld Sunday Jackson’s conviction and death sentence. The well-known and continuing farmers-herders conflict that has afflicted communities throughout Adamawa State and a large portion of Nigeria’s Middle Belt, South-West, South-South, and South-East was not mentioned in any way. Given that Jackson’s claimed attacker, a herder, met him in a rural bush area—a pattern common with the violent encounters that have resulted in hundreds of fatalities and displacements in the region—this mistake is startling.
Nigerian courts are allowed—indeed, expected—to take judicial notice of facts that are so well-known or notorious that they cannot be properly questioned under Section 124 of the Evidence Act. This includes the conflict between farmers and herders, as well as the tension and animosity they cause in the communities they influence. The case lacked essential social, sociological, and historical depth because the Supreme Court did not place Jackson’s anxiety and reaction within this reality.
The court should have recognised that Jackson would have legitimately viewed any unexpected attack from a well-known herder as a deadly threat since he was a member of an agricultural community that was vulnerable and regularly targeted. Ignoring this important context makes the ruling seem disconnected from the realities of rural Nigerian life and ignores the court’s duty to administer justice not just in accordance with the letter of the law but also in light of the larger context that shapes human behaviour.
The Supreme Court had a chance, a golden opportunity, to expand Nigerian jurisprudence on self-defence: To recognize that not all threats come with time to think; that a farmer attacked on his own land should not be condemned for failing to flee; that justice must take into account the real-life context in which people act, not just the sterile pages of law books.
The Defences of Self-Defence and Provocation
What is self defense under the Nigerian Law?
According to Section 289 of the Criminal Code (CC), self-defence is the act of defending oneself or one’s property from harm that another person may attempt to cause. According to Section 32(3) of the Criminal Code, this right is acknowledged since it provides a legitimate defence for using force to fend off an assault on one’s person. Private defence is another name for it in the Penal Code (Section 59 Penal Code (PC)). ) Although using such force would be illegal under normal circumstances, it is justified on the theory of self-defence (John v. The State [2012] 7 NWLR (pt.1299) 336 C.A.).
The Court of Appeal defined self-defence as “the use of force to protect oneself, one’s family, or one’s property from a real or threatened attack” in EKPOUDO V. THE STATE (2021) LPELR-52826(CA)). When someone has a reasonable opinion that they are in risk of suffering immediate bodily injury and that they need to use force to stop it, they are usually justified in employing a fair amount of force in self-defence.
A person cannot be prosecuted for an act if it is reasonably necessary to defend oneself or another person from actual and illegal violence while they are present, according to Section 32(3) of the Criminal Code.
“Where a person kills another in defence of himself, such a killing is excused and does not amount to manslaughter under the Criminal Code or Culpable Homicide not punishable with death under the Penal Code,” the Supreme Court ruled in UWAEKWEGHINYA V. THE STATE (2005) 9 NWLR (PT. 930) 27 in order to activate the aforementioned section. According to both the Criminal and Penal Codes, the defence of self-defence is comprehensive, and if it is successful, the accused is released and acquitted.
This stance was also reaffirmed in the case of LAWALI V. STATE (2021) LPELR-56431, where the Court of Appeal held the following opinion: “The law states that if an accused person committed an unlawful act with no intent to kill or cause great harm, but the act caused a person’s death, a verdict of culpable homicide not punishable by death will be returned.” This is consistent with the Penal Code’s section 222(4), which stipulates that culpable homicide is not punishable by death if it is carried out without premeditation, during a furious altercation, and without the perpetrator taking unfair advantage of the situation or acting in an unusually cruel way.
As a result, self-defence is a constitutionally guaranteed right for everyone who is attacked by another person. It is a necessary defence, but it requires certain aspects to be established or demonstrated in it to be successful. According to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rasheed Aminu v. State ((2019) 7 NWLR (pt.1672) 481), the following conditions must be met for the self-defence petition to be successful. Section 32(3) of the Criminal Code states that they are the necessary components of self-defence, specifically:
a. That the victim was attacking or about to attack the defendant in a manner that grievous hurt and or death was possible, thus he had to defend himself.
b. That the self-defence was instantaneous and contemporaneous with threatened attack.
c. That the mode of defence was not greater or disproportionate with the threatened attack.
assault. The top court in MOHAMMAD V. THE STATE ((2019) 4 NWLR (pt. 1661) 98 at 101) accepted the elements outlined in Rasheed AMINU V. THE STATE ((2019) 7 NWLR (pt.1627) 481) in order to provide further details on self-defence under the Penal Code. This demonstrated unequivocally that the components of self-defence under the Criminal and Penal codes are identical.
The court of appeal in MOHAMMED V. STATE (2020) LPELR-50919(CA) held that:
“The defence of self-defence is clearly a child of necessity. It is a defence that is not pleaded as a matter of course, but one in which the defendant is expected to establish that he was at the time of the killing in reasonable apprehension of death to himself or grievous harm and that it was necessary at the time to use the force which resulted in the death of the deceased in order to preserve his life. As an important aspect of the force used by the defendant must be shown to be proportionate to the force used or imminently threatened against him and reasonable in the circumstances in which it was used. The defence of self-defence, of course is not available where the person attacked used a greater degree of force than was necessary in repelling the attack.”
Additionally taken into consideration was the defence of provocation, which can lower a murder penalty to manslaughter. Provocation is recognised by the law in the following situations:
1. The accused was provoked by an abrupt and serious act.
2. The accused lost self-control as a result of the provocation.
3. The murder was committed before the victim had a chance to gather themselves.
In the Jackson case, the Supreme Court recognised that a stab wound can qualify as grave provocation. However, it was upheld that Jackson had some time to collect himself after defeating his assailant. The Court came to the conclusion that his actions were motivated by premeditated retaliation rather than passion.
It should be noted that this criterion does not take into account the mental and physical condition of a person who has recently survived a violent, near-death experience. It is impossible to demand unbiased assessment in these situations, particularly when that assessment is made from an intellectual, detached perspective.
The Dissenting Opinion; A Voice Of Moderation
When events or actions are precisely described on paper and supported by evidence, logic, or policy, they can seem completely reasonable. However, the perception changes the instant a human face is associated with that identical occurrence. An action that at one point looked necessary or even realistic can suddenly feel far more complicated, emotional, and personal. Numbers are emotionless. There are no families in statistics. However, people do. And we are reminded that empathy is sometimes necessary in addition to reason when the abstract becomes concrete, when names take the place of case numbers and anecdotes take the place of bullet points.
Honorable Justice Helen Ogunwumiju, JSC, in her lone but fierce dissent, opined:
“It is not reasonable, nor indeed natural, to expect that a man who has been stabbed twice and suddenly finds himself struggling for his life, would pause to calibrate the proportionality of his defensive action. The expectation of retreat after such an attack is neither practical nor fair.”
Her Lordship underlined that actual human experience, not merely theoretical reasoning, must be used to understand the law. Jackson’s confessional testimony, which was never legally challenged but was also never supported by outside forensic or eyewitness evidence, was the only basis the trial court used, she said. Jackson acted within the acceptable bounds of both provocation and self-defence, according to her opinion. She suggested that Jackson’s case be re-examined for a potential pardon and urged the use of executive clemency.
The Critique
Many in the legal world have criticised the Supreme Court’s ruling as being perverse, unfair, and unscholarly. According to writers and editorials from a number of public newspaper platforms, including The Guardian, ThisDay, and Premium Times, the court has permitted form to overrule substance, and the ruling shows a concerning disengagement from the realities of violence, particularly in the agrarian belt of Nigeria.
The inhabitants of the “Land of Beauty” are accustomed to the violence that surrounds Adamawa State. As an overture, the Bwatiye (also known as Bachama) people, a socio-cultural group with transboundary ethnic affiliations that extend into parts of the Republic of Cameroon, call Numan, a town that gives its name to one of the 21 Local Government Areas of Adamawa State in North-East Nigeria, their ancestral homeland. Numan’s fertile grounds, which are geographically located within the Benue River basin and fed by the Taraba River, one of its major tributaries, have long sustained sedentary farming practices. Simultaneously, Fulbe pastoralists have long lived in the area and depended on its grazing ability to sustain their animals.
These demographic and ecological factors have made Numan a key location in the long-running and bloody struggle for survival between armed nomadic pastoralists and sedentary agrarian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. This war, which is often described as a crisis resulting from “scarce land and water resources,” is thought to have killed about 10,000 people since 2013. After the insurgency led by the Boko Haram group, it is generally considered to be Nigeria’s second most deadly conflict.
Between around 2015 and the beginning of 2018, Numan served as a focal point for violent clashes between armed pastoralist groups and farmland communities. Even though the exact number of casualties is still unknown, independent reporting, like that done by researcher James Court in a 2023 publication, shows that by the time hostilities ended in January 2018, about 150 people had been killed, hundreds of Fulbe residents had been displaced, and many villages had been destroyed. Legal actions were brought before the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Court of Justice) due to the severity of the crisis.
Professor Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, the vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria at the time, made an official visit to Adamawa State on December 5, 2017, to have a personal look at the situation. Following this visit, the Federal Government launched emergency relief efforts aimed at impacted areas, such as Shafaron, Kodomti, Tullum, Mzoruwe, and Mararraban Bare in the Numan Local Government Area, and Dong, Lawaru, and Kukumso in the Demsa Local Government Area. At the same time, the government started a nationwide consultation process to look for long-term solutions to the farmers-herders dispute. But in the end, this endeavour was unable to produce definitive results.
Amidst these changes, the incidents that took place in the Kodomti village in Jackson’s case in 2018 were the focus of a criminal inquiry and prosecution. This led to an appeal by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, which issued its ruling on March 7, 2025. The incident in issue took place on January 27, 2015, on the property of a farmer named Sunday Jackson, who fatally stabbed an attacker named Alhaji Ardo Bawuro. After a fight, Alhaji Ardo Bawuro was discovered dead from three fatal neck stab wounds that were reportedly caused by Mr. Jackson.
The judgement has yet another serious problem. In his concurring opinion, Justice Isamani felt that one stab was sufficient after successfully retrieving the knife from Ardo Bawuro, and three was excessive, demonstrating vindictiveness. However, the supreme court was not presented with any proof of which of the three stab wounds killed Baworo. What if it was the first stab? Nowhere in the ruling was a pathologist’s report mentioned; there was a coroner’s report. Even Jackson’s extrajudicial statement to the police was self-evident:
“I was cutting thatching grasses in a bush in Kodomti village in Numan LGA on Tuesday, 27/01/15 at approximately 11:10 a.m. when the deceased, Alh Buba Bawuro, as named, assaulted me after losing sight of some people who were allegedly after him for murdering his livestock. We got into a wrestling match when he assaulted me out of rage and attempted to stab me with a dagger. I was able to take the blade away from him and stabbed him in the throat three times. I took heels and fled when the deceased fell and began sliding down in a pool of his blood.
Conclusion: Justice Denied In The Shadow Of Law
The decision of Sunday Jackson v. State will surely be remembered for a long time, but so will the insights it provides into Nigeria’s disjointed justice system. It reveals a judicial system that, in its current incarnation, all too frequently puts doctrine before humanity, technicalities above substance, and theoretical consistency above practical reality. It is respectfully argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling is bizarre, unscholarly, and ultimately unwarranted, while being wrapped in the pretentious language of precedent and procedural neatness. It did no justice.
The law is being weaponised against its own intent when a man is accused of murder for surviving an unprovoked, nearly deadly attack on his own farmland. A young farmer named Sunday Jackson behaved with the impulse that all people have in their will to survive when he was protecting his life and means of subsistence on his own property. It says volumes about how disconnected our judiciary has gotten from the people it is supposed to serve that the nation’s highest court could analyse this inclination and pronounce it illegal.
I respectfully contend that the ruling is perverse not because it violates the law but rather because it perverts the law to the point that it no longer resembles fairness. In contrast to the same apex court’s warning that “the law is but the handmaid to deliver justice” in BELLO v. A.G. OYO STATE (1986) 5 NWLR 820, it elevated law above justice. According to the Jackson ruling, a man who had been stabbed twice had to flee his own country, although we were not told where.
He was required to predict whether his assailant would reassemble for a second attack or find a piece of rock. It criticises him for not acting like a calm strategist assessing proportionality on a hypothetical scale rather than a scared person fighting for his life. This is the application of legal logic to lived experience.
Since the ruling ignored changing legal norms across comparable jurisdictions, I humbly contend that it is not scholarly. Many of the antiquated colonial constructions that Nigerian courts have long upheld have been abandoned or modified by the legal systems that gave rise to them. Since then, the globe has advanced, from American states’ “stand your grounds” policy to Canada’s acknowledgement of “psychological trauma” in violent interactions and even UK precedents that acknowledge “mistaken but honest fear.” The Sunday Jackson majority ruling is still based on a dwindling history of the better-forgotten dark ages.
Most importantly, the verdict is completely unfair. As a moral requirement and a constitutional commitment, justice must defend the weak rather than punish them for living. The state must never be used as a weapon by justice against its people. The Supreme Court only enforced law when it upheld Jackson’s death sentence; it did not uphold justice. This distinction is fundamental rather than merely technical. The heaviest punishment known by law was meted out to a man who ought to have been accorded mercy, or at worst, clemency. That strikes me as deliberate and institutionalised injustice.
Further illustrating the structural injustices that afflict Nigeria’s criminal justice system is the judiciary’s unwillingness to question the faulty confessional statement that was taken without the presence of counsel and without being supported by outside evidence. This was not just a case of poor legal judgement; rather, it was an example of how institutional violence is legitimised and perpetuated through the judicial system.
Jackson was let down by the police, prosecutors, judges, and eventually the legal system itself on many fronts, from the need to withdraw to the burden of demonstrating need to the casual rejection of oral testimony that sounded like the truth. This case was never definitive, as evidenced by the existence of a dissenting opinion. It was and always will be debatable. It has always been debatable and always will be. Therefore, death shouldn’t have been the end of it.
My Take
This post has made an effort to put Sunday Jackson’s facts, background, and humanity at the forefront of legal thought—something the ruling was unable to accomplish. It has maintained that the concepts of provocation and self-defence need to be updated to take into account modern circumstances. It has put forth legislative models that ground the law in the moral imperative of justice rather than in icy abstraction. Ultimately, legislation needs to be more than just reasoning. It needs to be an active equity tool.
According to Dean Roscoe Pound, it must be a social engineering tool. Whose life does the law actually value or protect if the system is unable to save the life of a guy who defends himself? Which life is important? Let Sunday Jackson’s case mark the day we ceased to silently pose that question. Lastly, it is argued that Sunday Jackson’s right to self-defence and his right to life were unjustly violated by the Supreme Court and subordinate courts in the case under review, which resulted in his conviction. I respectfully contend that the majority ruling of the Supreme Court in this case is riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and departures from established law and its own stare decisis.
In addition to all common law nations and other jurisdictions, self-defence is regarded as a defence under international human rights law. Section 33(2)(a) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 Constitution acknowledges it. Why, then, would the Supreme Court in this case undercut it? Even though Hon. Justice M.B. Idris’s lead ruling in the case is peculiar and objectionable, Emmanuel Agim, Haruna Simon Tsammani, and Habeeb Abiru, three other Hon. Justices, sadly, concurred with him in their concurring opinions! Just Hon.
Helen Ogunwumiju, a justice, dissented. The concurring Justices’ failure to conclude that the Appellant/Defendant should have been found guilty of manslaughter, a lesser crime, rather than culpable homicide, which carries a death sentence (murder), is as startling. Must there always be concurring judgements, particularly when they are too brief to be believable and depart from established stare decisis? Additionally, it is respectfully argued that Sunday Jackson v. The State is simply one of many unexplainable cases that come from our courts, with the Supreme Court being exempt.
The list is growing, including the following cases: PILLARS v. DESBORDES; MACHINA’S APC PRIMARIES; Rivers State political crisis; People’s Democratic Party National Secretary tussle; 2020 Imo State governorship election case; 2018 Osun State governorship election case; 2019 Kogi State governorship election case; etc. Unknowingly, some of these rulings are eroding Nigerians’ faith in the judiciary. And if the tendency keeps up, I hope and pray that anarchy and a flurry of self-help won’t follow. I am especially troubled since lower courts are bound by these rulings (precedents), which rarely serve justice, as a sworn solicitor and advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, a legal scholar, a social critic, and a supporter of the Nigerian project.
I beg the Supreme Court to step up and support the movement for a new Nigeria that will benefit the general populace as well as the country’s leaders.
