EKPO & ANOR V. THE STATE

• Pages: 280-282

280

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NIGERIAN SUPREME COURT CASES

[1964] N.S.C.C.

EKPO & ANOR V. THE STATE

5

1.

EDEM AKPAN EKPO

2.

ITA ASUQUO

V

THE STATE

APPELLANTS

RESPONDENT

SUIT NO. SC 449/1964

10

SUPREME COURT OF NIGERIA

BAIRAMIAN,

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J.S.C.

ONYEAMA,

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J.S.C.

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15

COKER,

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J.S.C.

25th November, 1964

Legislation - Criminal Code, s.10 - Criminal Law and Procedure - Accomplices

- Accessories after the fact - Helping the culprit to escape punishment.

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ISSUE:

1.

Is a person who aids an offender in escaping an accessory after the fact, and

if so, is he also an accomplice?

FACTS:

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The defendant and others went up a creek in two canoes loaded with smuggled

goods. Some customs officers came in a canoe; this some smugglers capsized,

and one officer got bogged in the mud; the first defendant shot him, and the sec-

ond swam up and gave him matchet cuts. Then the smuggling party went off.

A fisherman, who happened to be thereabouts, identified the first defendant

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only; the evidence against the second came from two of the smugglers. The trial

Judge thought these two witnesses could not have known that the defendants would

go as far as murder to escape arrest as smugglers, also that the smugglers went

off to avoid being caught with contraband, and not necessarily for the purpose of

avoiding punishment for the murder. He did not regard those two witnesses as

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accomplices, and the main question in the appeal was whether that was not a mis-

take.

The term 'accomplice' includes an accessory after the fact (a person who as-

sists someone he knows to be an offender to escape publishment: see s.10 of the

Criminal Code, not cited in the judgment).

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HELD:

The party ran away to avoid arrest for the murder as much as to avoid being

caught with contraband goods, and in that common aim to escape they, including

those two witnesses, were helping the defendants to escape punishment and

should have been regarded as accessories after the fact and therefore as accom-

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plices.

[As to

Accomplices generally,

see 11 HALSBURY'S LAWS 4th Edition 271 para.

457.]

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CASE REFERRED TO IN JUDGMENT:

1.

Davies v. D.P.P.

(1954) A.C. 378, 400

J.A.

Cole for appellants.