INTRODUCTION
As a general rule, no particular
number of witness is required in order to discharge the onus of proof which lies upon a party and a court
cannot take into account the number of witnesses who has given evidence for each
side as a relevant factor in deciding which should succeed. What should be
considered is the quality and not the quantity of the evidence. The court can
act on the evidence of one single witness if that witness can be believed given
all surrounding circumstances and also if he is able to establish a case beyond
reasonable doubt as in the case of ONAFOWOKAN VS THE STATE. This principle is
recognized under section 200 which
stated thus:
“Except as provided in section 201 – 204 of this Act, no
particular number of witnesses shall in any case be required for the proof of
any fact”
In other words, a person
can be convicted of any offence on the testimony of a single adult witness just
as a plaintiff in a court suit can succeed on the evidence of a single credible
witness as in the case of STEPHEN EMOGA
VS STATE and EMMANUEL UGWUMBA VS
STATE.
The aforementioned really,
negated or to an extent do not believe in the evidence by corroboration in
order for a submission to be accepted by the court.
WHAT IS CORROBORATION
To a lay man, corroboration can simply
mean to support a substantive information to authenticate if by given an additional supporting or
supplementary evidence as a backup.
·
In a legal parlance,
corroboration means conforming, enforcing and reinforcing evidence supporting
another evidence of the same fact. This is the definition given by LORD REID in DPP VS KILBOURNE. It is an evidence that shows that a crime has
been committed and it has been committed by the accused. It is not a
repetition of the confession of the
accused but a confirmation of witness evidence by an independent testimony; it
is also the authenticating of a testimony by showing that a crime has actually
been committed by the accused charged. According to LORD HEWAIT C.J in the case of R
VS WHITEHEAD for any evidence to amount to corroboration, “it must be
extraneous to the witness who is to be corroborated”.
·
Corroboration can
be oral, real documentary or circumstantial as seen in the case of OLALEYE VS STATE. In that case, a man
raped a girl of fourteen years. The girl was examined and was found to have the
same gonorrhea found in the man accused of the rape. It held to be enough
circumstantial corroborate evidence.
·
Silence at times
may amount o corroborate evidence in the circumstance where the accused refuse
to talk where he reasonably ought to have talked. However, it is not in all
cases, it is often left at the discreation of that court to determine under
each condition whether such silence amount to corroboration or not. In the case
up OKE VS THE REPUBLIC; a police witness
said that he took the complainant to the house of the accused who was charged
with defilement of a girl and that there
the complainant pointed at the accused
saying that he was the one who defiled her. The accused said nothing. The trial
judge apparently trented this alleged conduct of the accused as corroboration.
On appeal, the supreme court held it inadequate to have amounted to
corroboration. In the case of R vs kumi,
the silence by the accused in that case amended to admission by conduct.
·
In order for an
evidence to be capable in law to constitute corroboration, such evidence must
be
·
Admissible itself
·
From a source
independent of the evidence to be corroborated and
·
Such as to tend
to show by confirmation of some material particularly not that the offence
charged was committed but also, was committed by the dependent.
However, pursuant to section 200 of the evidence
Act which stated that no particular
number of witnesses shall in any case be required for the prove of any fact,
the general rule is that corroboration of evidence is not required except where
the law demands it as seen in the case of NWAMBE
Vs STATE and THEOPHILUS Vs STATE. The cases where the law stipulated that there
should be corroboration constitute the main exceptions to the rule and also
instances in which as a matter of frachie require evidence of corroboration.
When the problem of reliability of witness arise in a suit,
this suggest that in such suit, no conviction should be based wholly or mainly
upon the evidence from such a single witness, though recent legislation has
gone in the opposite direction and shows that these is little possibility of
establishing such a principle. In criminal cases, the rule as to corroboration
applies only to witnesses for the prosecution as seen in the case of DAVIES Vs D.P.P. The issue of
corroboration therefore can only arise if the evidence needed to be
corroborated is given by the prosecution and not the defence. The general rule
that no particular number of witness is required in order to discharge the onus
of proof which lies on a party is subject to the following exception or cases
in which corroboration is required;
A)
Evidence of accomplice
Who is an accomplice?
Previously, the Act did
not state or define who an accomplice is. The west African court in the case of
NWEKE VS R, stated that no formal definition is
possible because the question whether a person is an accomplice is by and large
one of fact in each particular case. The federal supreme court also held in the
case of R VS EZECHI following the
English House of Lord’s decision in D.P.P
VS DRVIES that witnesses who are to be treated as accomplices are:
i) Participants in the actual crime.
ii) Receivers of property which
the accused is charged with stealing and
iii) Participants in other crimes
alleged to have been committed by the accused where evidence of such other
crimes is admissible to prove system or intent or to negative accident. In
common parlance, an accomplice is any person who actually does the act or make
the omission that constitute the offence or anybody who does or omit to do any
act for the purpose of enabling, aiding or abetting another person to commit an
offence.
Anybody who falls under this
class of people mentioned above either by propagating, instigating, aiding or
abetting the perpetrate or help the actual perpetrator to escape punishment are
participants and thus can be charged and punished for the same offence as the
actual criminal.
Presently, under the
Evidence Act, 2001 (amended) an accomplice is defined under section 198 (2) to mean person who
pursuant to section 7 of the
criminal code may be deemed to have taken part in committing the offence asthe
defendant or is an accessory after the fact to the offence, or a receiver of
the stolen goods. Persons that we participants as provided under section 7 (B) of the criminal code,
those who enable others or aid others to commit an offence. It envisages that
if a person aid an offender to accomplish an actusreus of an offence but with
an intent different from that of the offender he is not by virtue of this
provision, a party to the offence and consequently, not an accomplice.
Under 198 (1) of the Guidence Act,
where the only proof against a person charged with an offence is the
evidence of an accomplice uncorroborated in any material particularly
implicating the accused, the judge must warn the juy that it is unsafe to
convict the accused upon such evidence though they have the legal right to do
so, they are expected to look for an independent evidence firstly because the
accomplice may invent an offence and accuse someone of committing it and
secondly, he may falsely accuse someone else of an offence that had been
committed.
In practice, they are
additional cases to the ones provided in the evidence Act on where the court
will insist on corroboration. They are as follows:
1)
Agent Provocateur
An agent provocateur is
not an accomplice. The term “Agent provocateur” has been used by Nigeria courts
to mean
a)
Police officers
and their aids who positively incite, provoke, then join in the commission of a
crime.
b)
Such officers and
aids who being aware that a person or group of persons has manifested a clear
intention to commit a crime but join in to facilitate the commission of the
crime in order that the criminals may be caught.
The evidence of an agent
provocateur who fall with the first class must be corroborated in some material
particular by independent evidence tending to show that both alleged crime was
committed and the accused participated in it. This can be seen in the case
of BROWNS
VS J H WATSON. When used in the second sence, public order and safety
demand that the evidence of the police or his aides should be sufficient to
fund a conviction.
ii) Witness With Interest to Serve in Criminal Cases or Tainted Witness:
The term “tainted” witness
does not appear in the evidence Act or in any other Nigerian Act, it will be
impossible to give it a fixed definition. However, it has been used to mean an
intermediate stage between an accomplice and non accomplice. The term was also
used by the supreme court in the famous 1963. “treasonable felony” trials
involving the leader of opposition in parliament.
The supreme court in the
case of MICHAEL ADEDAPO AND ORS VS R stated
that a tainted witness was not an accomplice whose evidence required
corroboration. Dissenting to this point, Mbanefo J.S.C was of the view that though
a tainted witness was not an accomplice in the strict sense, that a tainted
witness is one whose evidence would be unsafe to act upon without
corroboration.
Another form of tainted
witness is a person who is not an accomplice but a witness with his own
interest or who have some purpose of his own to serve. This principle was
applied by the supreme court in the case of WILLIAMS IDAHOSA AND ORS VS R.
iii) Sexual Offence General:
What constitute sexual
offences is provided under the Evidence
Act and various sections of the CRIMINAL
CODE.It provides that a person cannot be convicted of certain sexual
offences upon the uncorroborated testimony of one witness. Invariably, it is
insisted by the court that in sexual offences, corroboration of the
complainant’s evidence is needed though not required by the law. This was the
decision of the court in the area of SUNMONU
VS POLICE. The offences are
defilement of girls under 13 years of age, defilement of girls between 13 and
16 years of age and of idiots, procuration and procuring defilement of women by
threats or of trend or administering drugs contrary to sections 218, 221, 233 and 224 of the criminal code respectively.
It is therefore usual in
sexual offences to be way of convicting without corroboration. This can be seen
in the case of OKOT VS THE STATE.
IV) SWORN
EVIDENCE OF A CHILD:
If a child understand the nature
of an oath, he should give sworn evidence. Even where he testifies an oath, the
court should hestitate to convict solely on such evidence. In the case of AKPAN VS STATE, the court held that
sworn evidence of child is not a matter
of law to be corroborated but it is desirable not to act immediately because
there is a risk in acting on an uncorroborated evidence of young boys and
girls.
The failure of a judge to
warn himself of the risk of acting on the uncorroborated sworn evidence of a
child does not cause any miscarriage of justice if the judge clearly addressed
his mind to the fact that the witness was a child of eleven years but
understood the nature of the oath and the necessity of telling the truth.
This can be seen in the case of R VS KOFI FRANCIS.
V) BREACH OF PROMISE TO MARRY:
This is a civil matter. It
is the only civil matter in which provision for corroboration is made. Section 197 of the Evidence Act stated
no plaintiff in any action for breach of promise to marry shall be entitled to
succeed unless his or her testimony is corroborated by some other material
evidence in support of such promise and the fact that the defendant did not
answer letters affirming that he had promised to marry the plaintiff is not
such corroboration.
They are other offences
for which conviction cannot be heard without corroboration like section,
perjury, exceeding, speed limit, e.t.c. In all this offences, no person is
meant to be convicted unless a corroborated evidence has been laid.
In Nigeria legal system,
there is no particular number of witnesses a party my require in order to prove
or disprove a case but they are some offences in which if the court should give
their judgment on without calling on witnesses to give their testimony, it will
lead to miscarriage of justice and therefore, the judgment would be quashed and
then appeal will be held on it like in the case of QUEEN VS OKAGBUE.