Right to private and family life is
provided under section 37 of the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of
Nigeria. The section provides that:
The
privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and
telegraphic communications is hereby guaranteed and protected.
By this provision, a learned and
distinguished commentator has said that this right is “a recognition of the
saying that a man’s home is his castle”. This right guarantees the security
agencies should not tap one’s
telephone lines or subject one’s house to unwarranted search
or his property to
seizure. Notwithstanding this noble constitutional safeguard, reports of the
seizure of citizen’s mail and correspondence, invasion of their offices and
homes do continually occur in this country. The most potent factor of
interference remains police powers of entry into home in the course of arrest of
a suspected criminal or investigation of criminal matters. But be that as it
may, the relevant law enjoins the police to obtain a search warrant and so that
the provision is observed more in breach than in observance. Therefore, every
one has the right to enjoy his or her family life and its privacy without
interference by external bodies.
It
should also be noted that the to private and family life may be derogated in
the overwhelming interest of defense, public safety, public order, public
morality or public health or for the purpose of protecting the right and
freedom of the other persons as enacted in section 45 (1) (a) and (b) of the
1999 constitution. In
OLMSTEAD
V. U. S, it was held
that evidence obtained by wire tapping of telephone on a criminal prosecution
is admissible. The above decision of the court was informed by the fact that
the wire tapping of telephone which was a violation of a person’s right to
private and family life was justified because it was done to enhance criminal
prosecution which affects the public. In the same vein, it was held in COX BROADCASTING CORPORATION V. COHN,
by the supreme court of united states, that it was not actionable as pre
private life for a mass medium to publish the name of a rape victim because
according to DOUGLAS, J. “there is no power on the part of government to
suppress or penalize the publication of “news of the day”.
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