COURSE
TITLE: LEGAL DRAFTING AND CONVEYANCING
COURSE
CODE: PPL 438
COMMENCEMENTS
Section 2 (1) of the interpretation Act provides that
“ an Act is passed when the
President assents to the Bill for the Act whether or no the Act then comes into
force”. By this is meant that when the Act or Law is passed is different from
when it becomes operative. An Act or law may become operative on a given date
or a date in the past or future.
According to section 2 (2)
of the interpretation Act, where no other provision is made as to the particular time an
enactment is to become operative, it shall come into force on the day the Act
is passed; in any other case, on the day the enactment is made. In the case of KAYODE V SARAKI,[1]
the court held that when there is no provision as to commencement in a law, the
law shall be deemed to come into force on the date it was passed.
In
drafting commencement date, two ways could be followed:
1.
If the date is
fixed or in the future or the past, the date is inserted immediately
after the long title at the extreme top right without making it a
section, though it has a marginal note
“commencement”
2.
If it is intended that the Act of Law shall
commence on the occurrence of an
event or by the authority of a
person, the commencement date is written as sections in the Act or Law
APPLICATION
The application provision is legislation
states the specific things, persons or places the law covers. It is necessary in
the Act or law is not intended to apply
to all persons and the entire country,
or is limited to a particular subject
matter. The general rule is that
legislations are meant to apply to all persons within the jurisdictional Competence
of the enacting authority. Hence, the 1999 constitution and the companies and Allied Matters Act 1990
do not have application provision because they are intended to apply to all persons in Nigeria.
The application section gives an
indication of the area of coverage of the statute. It
serves to remove uncertainties and solve problems as to the manner a new
law will affect variety of situations.
For
instance :
a.
This Act
shall not apply to non – Nigerian citizens ( The National Youth Service Corps
Act)
b.
“
This Act shall extend to the Northern part of Nigeria”
DEFINITIONS
Definitions are used to achieve two
purposes; to give the meaning of some words or concepts used throughout the
Bill; and to reduce the length of the
legislation by avoiding repetition. In the North American case of COMMONWEALTH V MASSINI,
the court described the relevance
of the definitions thus:
“Where the legislature defines the words it uses in a statute neither the jury nor the court may define them
otherwise … The legislature may create its own dictionary, and its definition may be
different from ordinary
usage. When it does define the words used in a statute, the courts need not
refer to the technical meaning and deviation of those
words as given in dictionaries, but must accept the statutory definitions”
When defining words in a subsidiary legislation , drafters must
obey the strict rule in section 19 (1)
of the interpretation Act,
which provides that an expression used in a subsidiary instrument has the
same meaning as in the Act conferring power to make the instrument. Therefore
when drafting subsidiary legislation, the drafter cannot give words in
the subsidiary legislation a meaning that is
different from the meaning
from the meaning
given to the word by the principal legislation .