By Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, SAN
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INTRODUCTION
If you tag them as the celebrity couple of the times, you will not be far from the truth. They dazzled us with their fairy tales of romance, of faithfulness and loyalty, and of endless love and mutual satisfaction. But all that façade was shattered last week when the bubble burst between the caring husband and his darling wife. We saw a distressed angel singing the songs of trauma, abuse, and caging.
The internet was agog with messages of solidarity, empathy, and then condemnation of the supposed aggressor. She should rank to be his daughter in love, deserving of the best of care, attention, and doting. Listening to the tales as narrated in her videos then gave a different impression which should never be associated with his personality and profile. The dust had not settled when we heard his own side of the drama, of alleged immaturity, drug abuse, and other sordid tales.
The crowd of supporters became divided. Who is to blame? Which story is more plausible? How can they be reconciled? Online in-laws and matrimonial experts devoted pages upon pages of their blogs and social media handles to analyze, dissect, and pontificate on the romantic adventure that seemed to have hit the rocks.
Good enough, family members and loved ones on both sides have since intervened to secure harmony, reconciliation, and peaceful reunion. That has been the prayer and good wish of all persons of conscience for divine intervention to restore conjugal bliss to the admirable couple.
The case has however brought to the fore the need for legislative intervention to stem the monstrous tide of domestic crisis, marital woes, and internal wranglings between couples and family members. The family is the foundation of every society and it must be protected, secured, and preserved. Governments at all levels must make it a matter of urgency to convene stakeholders to work out the strategy of enhancing matrimonial peace through legislation.
The Matrimonial Causes Act, the Marriage Act, and the Family Law of the various States are all of ancient origin and thus outdated to address the trending issues between couples and family members. These pieces of legislation were inherited from the colonial powers and they do not reflect the unique cultural identities of the people, their faith, and the impact of their traditions on the marriage institution. The concept of cultural and traditional arbitration all have their good and ugly effects on the oldest company of mankind.
So too it is for religious interventions, some of which have worked to revive collapsed unions while some have ruined them completely. From all indications, the concept of marriage as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others is strange to the Nigerian culture and tradition. Traditionally and culturally, marriage is seen mainly as a joint project involving the nuclear and the extended branches.
While the couple is free to develop themselves and work out a template for the success of their union, the issue of constant oversight by their parents, siblings, friends, and colleagues should not and cannot be discarded. Permit me at this juncture to return to the case of FRN v Okeke as reported in (2025) 16 NWLR (Pt.2011) 293, a judgment of the Supreme Court of Nigeria which highlights the evil of domestic abuse and the need for urgent and deliberate action.
The Effect of Duration Between Act of Accused Person and Death of Deceased in Determining Cause of Death
In determining cause of death, the duration between the suspected act of death (i.e. the actus reus) and the death is not important. Accordingly, an accused person could be guilty of the offence of murder or manslaughter even if the duration is long. In so far as the court comes to the conclusion correctly that the act of the accused person caused the death of the deceased, a conviction and sentence will be proper in law.
The Effect of a Break in Chain of Causation on Guilt of Accused Person
In order to hold an accused person criminally responsible for murder, the chain of causation must not be broken. Once there is a broken link in the chain of causation, that broken link must be resolved in favour of the accused person as it affects the actus reus of the offence. Put another way, where the injury which was inflicted prior to the death of the deceased is not the proximate, legal, or direct cause of the death of the deceased, the benefit of doubt must be given to the accused person because the available evidence in such a situation does not pin the accused person down to the death of the deceased.
This is so because of the novus actus interveniens and nova interveniens, id est that there is an intervening or supervening cause. Thus, the cause of death of the deceased in a murder trial should be established with certainty because the act which caused the death is, in most cases, a certain act.
Per SANKEY, J.S.C. at pages 319–320, paras. E–C:
“Thus, the injury sustained on the date in question for which the deceased was treated and discharged overnight, was clearly not the proximate, legal, or direct cause of death. This is a classic case of where there are obvious novus actus interveniens (intervening) and nova interveniens (supervening) causes of death. Accordingly, in the face of possible multiple causes of death, not excluding the unexplained healed scar on the neck of the deceased which remained unexplained by the appellant, largely due to the absence of an autopsy report which was rightly highlighted by the court below, the appellant undoubtedly did not prove positively that it was the act of the respondent that led to the death of the deceased.
At the risk of repetition but for the sake of emphasis, the cause of death which is stroke due to hypertension, is not traceable to the injury inflicted on the deceased’s head by the respondent, which had long since healed, and so was not even considered significant, contributory or even worthy of mention in the death certificate. Since it cannot therefore be said with any degree of certainty that it was the act of the respondent that led to the death of the deceased, the doubt raised in the mind of the court below from the evidence presented by the appellant, must be resolved in favour of the respondent. That’s the law.”
The Meaning and Synonyms of “Scar”
“Scar” means a mark left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn, or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed. Synonyms of “scar” are “mark,” “blemish,” “scratch,” and “wound.”
LESSONS FROM THE CASE
The events leading to this case happened a very long time ago, so I suppose that the respondent must be free by now, given that the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal against his acquittal by the Court of Appeal. But I can see the pain in the hearts of the family of his father, who seemed to have died in vain and for no good cause. There are so many lessons to learn from the case.
ESSENCE OF FAMILY VALUES
First, it should be the responsibility of the head of every family through the head and body to “train up” their children at their tender ages, in sound doctrine, obedience, mutual respect, and other family values. Whatever provokes a brother to take out a bottle to hit his own blood sister speaks to lack of proper home training and a faulty foundation.
Siblings are to dwell together in love and unity, with mutual care and respect as the basis of cohabitation. If and when such disputes arise that cannot be resolved between them, they should be trained to escalate and not retaliate. A boy should learn to report his sister to his father or mother and not to plan to strike her with a bottle or knife.
And if at all he was provoked to such an intolerable limit by the sister, his planned action should abate immediately his father appears. The fact that the respondent still intended (that is the narration) to hit his sister with the bottle despite the presence of his father on the scene also speaks to improper breeding.
FAILURE OF THE HEALTHCARE SECTOR
The other lesson from this case is the growing issue of medical negligence, wrong diagnosis, and failure of the healthcare sector generally.
From the facts of this case, the respondent’s father went to lodge a report against the respondent at the Police Station by himself. The Police Officer at the Police Station took him to the Teaching Hospital in Abuja. He was treated overnight and discharged. After over two weeks of the incident, the deceased suffered a stroke. He was taken to a private hospital, St. Mary’s Catholic Hospital Abuja, where he was attended to and received treatment until he died on 6th November 2011.
A person hit with such a heavy object as a bottle, with force by a man, on his head, should be kept in the hospital for proper observation. Comprehensive laboratory tests, extensive scans, and other medical examinations should be carried out to determine the extent of damage. The father was taken to a teaching hospital, which should be the tertiary level of medical care with the best facilities and equipment, but he was treated overnight and discharged. There was no follow-up treatment to monitor his progress until he suffered a stroke two weeks later.
FAILURE OF PROSECUTION
The respondent in this case was arraigned before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory on a charge of culpable homicide punishable with death under section 221 of the Penal Code. Perhaps the complainants and the police were overwhelmed with emotion which clouded the exercise of proper judgment in drafting the charges.
In a case such as this, you cannot approach the court with a single charge strategy, especially in a domestic case where witnesses may be unwilling to allow the family to suffer the double tragedy of losing the father and the son. Alternative charges of manslaughter, assault occasioning harm, or such other legal handcuffs should have been slammed upon the respondent.
The reality of this tragedy may be that the same respondent may now be the head of the family to manage the assets of the deceased father. Such is life.
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