Home:: Journals

THE CORONER'S PLACE...

Coroners and Coroner Laws: What are they About?

Across Nigeria, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people lose their lives every year following acts of wanton violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers, vigilante groups, or ethnic militia groups. These deaths are mostly arbitrary and extrajudicial. Some of the victims of these extrajudicial deaths are people who refuse the illicit demand of money by the police at checkpoints, or are persons against whom complaints were lodged to the police for which they are arrested and later killed, or are tenants involved in ordinary civil disputes with their landlords and get killed after the landlords call ethnic vigilante groups to deal with the "recalcitrant" tenant. Some of the victims too are political opponents of people in power or government exterminated with the aid of vigilante group members. When these killings happen, their perpetrators often escape justice and go unpunished because they find convenient but largely dubious explanations covering up the true cause of death. Police officers and vigilante operatives kill at will because they know that they can escape from justice in a number of ways, particularly by shielding information, resisting truthful disclosures, frustrating investigations or prosecutions and excluding vital witnesses from the public. Covering up indiscriminate and abusive killings have therefore been the practice, the escape door, and the main obstacle to accountability for gross abuses of human rights. Coroner laws provide a default system for investigating and determining circumstances of unnatural, sudden or violent deaths within states' jurisdictions through an open, public investigation called an inquest.

"The manner in which a government reacts to human rights violations committed by its agents, through action or omission clearly shows the degree of its willingness to ensure effective protection of human rights." - United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra-judicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions.

If coroner laws are enforced, and coroner procedures observed, many "lies", untruths and cover-ups emanating from official quarters will likely be publicly exposed while secrecies surrounding true facts of how deaths come about will likely be uncovered. If for example, the police says someone in their custody died whilst trying to escape, they will have to narrate this information to an investigating magistrate (usually the coroner) who will inquire into the truthfulness of that statement. People who have testimonies of how the death came about can, at an inquest, give testimonies, and they can controvert police explanations or other official account of the death. The family of the victim(s), by themselves or through their representatives will also be able to ask questions probing whatever is alleged to be the cause of death. If this kind of hearing procedure is reinstated, and police officers or vigilante groups members understand and realize that it will not be easy to get away with murder merely by rendering false and dubious accounts of deaths, they will probably be less zealous about carrying out arbitrary and extrajudicial killings, and this will save the lives of thousands of people currently at risk of summary, arbitrary and extrajudicial deaths.