The Presumption of Innocence Under Siege: Media Trials, Press Releases and the Criminal Justice Process in Nigeria

Contributor: Iyanuoluwa Animasaun

Introduction

The presumption of innocence is a foundational safeguard of criminal justice. It requires that a person accused of a crime be treated as legally innocent until a court establishes guilt through due process. In Nigeria, section 36(5) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) gives this principle constitutional force, while article 7(1)(b) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantees the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty by a competent court or tribunal.^[1]

That protection is increasingly tested outside the courtroom. Law-enforcement and prosecutorial agencies routinely announce arrests through press briefings, publish photographs of suspects, circulate allegations on official social-media accounts and, in some cases, present suspects before journalists while investigations are still ongoing. The difficulty is not that public authorities may never communicate about criminal investigations. Transparency, public safety and the need to obtain information from the public can justify carefully framed disclosures. The constitutional problem arises when official communication moves beyond neutral information and presents accusation as adjudicated fact.

Media trials create a parallel process of public judgment before the judicial process has run its course. The effects can be severe: reputational injury, humiliation, threats to personal safety, loss of employment or social standing, and the persistence of digital material long after a suspect has been discharged or acquitted. The issue is therefore wider than whether a professional judge is likely to be influenced by press coverage. It concerns the State’s obligation to administer criminal justice consistently with dignity, privacy, fair hearing and the presumption of innocence.

This article examines the legality of prejudicial pre-trial publicity by Nigerian law-enforcement and prosecutorial bodies. It analyses the constitutional and statutory framework, considers the judicial response to media parades and related practices, identifies weaknesses in the present regulatory structure, and argues for enforceable limits on official communications concerning persons who have not been convicted.

Constitutional and Legal Foundations of the Presumption of Innocence

Section 36(5) of the Constitution provides that every person charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty.^[2] The guarantee operates alongside section 36(1), which protects the right to a fair hearing before an independent and impartial court or tribunal. Sections 34 and 35 further protect the dignity and personal liberty of the individual, while section 37 protects the privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications.^[3] Read together, these provisions establish a constitutional framework inconsistent with official conduct that publicly humiliates a suspect or communicates guilt before judicial determination.

The African Charter reinforces this protection. Article 5 guarantees respect for the dignity inherent in every human being, while Article 7(1)(b) expressly protects the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty by a competent court or tribunal.^[4] Because the Charter has been domesticated in Nigeria, its protections form part of Nigerian law and may be invoked alongside Chapter IV of the Constitution.^[5]

The Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 (ACJA) gives practical expression to these constitutional values. Section 8(1) requires that a suspect be accorded humane treatment, having regard to the right to dignity, and prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.^[6] Section 15 requires the police to record specified particulars of an arrested suspect, including a photograph and fingerprints.^[7] The purpose of that provision is identification and criminal-justice record keeping. It does not authorise the routine publication of a suspect’s photograph for publicity purposes.

It is therefore important to distinguish between taking a photograph as part of lawful identification procedures and publicly disseminating that photograph. The ACJA authorises the former; it does not, by that fact alone, authorise the latter. Similarly, an identification parade is an evidential procedure used in appropriate cases to test a witness’s ability to identify a suspect. It is conceptually and legally different from presenting an arrested person to the press for public display.

Privacy, Reputation and Pre-Trial Publicity

Pre-trial publicity also engages privacy and reputational interests. Section 37 of the Constitution supplies the primary Nigerian constitutional basis for analysing State disclosure of personal information. The fact that a person is under investigation does not automatically extinguish the person’s privacy interests or give public authorities an unrestricted licence to disseminate photographs, allegations, personal details or purported confessions.

Comparative human-rights jurisprudence supports this approach. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects private and family life, and the European Court of Human Rights has treated a person’s image, reputation, and personal data as matters that can fall within private life.^[8] In Margari v Greece, the Court considered the publication, on a prosecutor’s order, of a defendant’s photograph and personal data relating to pending criminal charges. It emphasised the sensitivity of criminal-charge data and the importance of ensuring that official publication accurately reflects the allegations while respecting the presumption of innocence.^[9]

This comparative jurisprudence is relevant not because the European Convention directly governs Nigerian authorities. Rather, it illustrates a principled method of balancing legitimate public communication against the rights of an unconvicted person. Publicity connected with criminal proceedings may sometimes be justified, particularly where it is necessary to locate a fugitive, identify additional victims, warn the public of a specific danger or obtain information essential to an investigation. But the mere existence of an investigation cannot convert every form of disclosure into a proportionate interference with privacy and dignity.

The same caution applies to press reporting. Freedom of expression and the press remain essential to democratic accountability and open justice, but reporting on pending criminal proceedings must be distinguished from an official declaration of guilt. Academic commentary has long identified the capacity of sustained pre-trial publicity to weaken the practical force of the presumption of innocence, particularly where allegations are repeatedly presented as facts.^[10] The risk is amplified where the source is a State agency whose statements carry institutional authority.

Media Trials in Nigerian Criminal Justice Practice

Pre-trial media trials in Nigeria commonly take several forms. The first is the press briefing in which an agency announces an arrest and describes the allegation in conclusive rather than provisional language. The second is the public parade of suspects before journalists, often while the suspects are restrained or positioned beside alleged exhibits. The third is publishing photographs, names, and allegations on agency websites or official social-media platforms. A fourth, and particularly troubling, practice occurs where suspects are questioned by journalists or presented as having confessed before they have been arraigned and before the voluntariness or admissibility of any statement has been judicially tested.

These practices collapse the distinction between suspicion, charge and conviction. A person may be lawfully arrested on reasonable suspicion without ultimately being charged. A person may be charged without being convicted. A confession reported in the media may later be disputed, excluded or found unreliable. Criminal adjudication exists precisely because accusation is not proof.

Digital publication deepens the problem. A televised parade that once might have faded from public attention can now be replicated indefinitely across online news platforms, search engines and social-media accounts. Even where the suspect is later discharged or acquitted, the original material may remain searchable, while the corrective outcome attracts far less attention. The resulting harm is not adequately captured by the question of whether publicity will influence the trial judge. It also affects dignity, privacy, livelihood, personal security and social reputation before any lawful finding of guilt.

Judicial Responses to Media Parades and Prejudicial Publicity

Nigerian courts have directly condemned the public parade of suspects. In Ndukwem Chiziri Nice v Attorney-General of the Federation, the Federal High Court criticised the police for presenting a suspect to the press immediately after arrest and before proper investigation, holding that the conduct prejudged the suspect and breached the constitutional guarantees of fair hearing and the presumption of innocence.^[11]

The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice reached a similar conclusion in Dyot Bayi and Others v Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Court held that presenting the applicants before the press when no court had found them guilty violated the presumption of innocence protected by article 7(1)(b) of the African Charter.^[12] The decision is especially significant because it treats public presentation by State authorities as a rights violation in itself, rather than requiring proof that a trial judge was actually influenced.

A further illustration is the Federal High Court decision concerning Ottoh Obono, who was paraded before journalists as an armed-robbery suspect before arraignment and was later exonerated following legal advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Court condemned the parade as making a mockery of the constitutional presumption of innocence and awarded damages against the police.^[13]

These authorities demonstrate that the legality of media parading should not be confused with the law governing evidential identification parades. An identification parade is conducted for a specific investigative purpose where identity is genuinely in issue. A media parade, by contrast, exposes a suspect to public judgment. It serves no necessary evidential function and can inflict constitutional injury even where the eventual criminal trial remains formally fair.

The Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules 2009 provide a procedural route through which an affected person may seek declarations, injunctions and damages for violations of constitutionally protected rights.^[14] That remedy is important but frequently reactive. Once a suspect’s image and alleged wrongdoing have been broadcast or circulated online, a later damages award cannot fully restore reputation or erase the digital record. Effective protection must therefore include urgent preventive relief where prejudicial publicity is threatened, and the risk of irreparable harm is real.

Defects in the Existing Framework

Nigeria’s legal framework contains strong constitutional principles but lacks sufficient operational detail. The first weakness is the absence of a comprehensive federal rule governing what law-enforcement and prosecutorial agencies may disclose about an unconvicted suspect. The Constitution, the African Charter and section 8 of the ACJA provide a strong basis for challenging degrading or prejudicial conduct, but they do not set out a detailed communications code defining permissible content, timing, exceptions and sanctions.

Second, responsibility for prejudicial disclosures is often institutionally diffuse. Press statements may be issued by spokespersons, investigators, task forces, or prosecutorial offices, yet the legal framework does not consistently identify who must authorise disclosure or what disciplinary consequence follows when an official presents an allegation as guilt. Without clear internal accountability, constitutional standards risk becoming aspirational rather than operational.

Third, remedies move more slowly than modern communications. A single press conference can be rebroadcast, clipped and reproduced across multiple platforms within minutes. Traditional rights litigation, even where ultimately successful, may arrive after the reputational injury has become effectively irreversible. The law therefore needs stronger preventive mechanisms, including rapid access to interim relief and internal agency review before publication.

Fourth, the law of contempt does not provide a complete answer. Contempt principles protect the administration of justice from publications that can prejudice pending proceedings. Still, many of the most damaging official disclosures occur at the investigative stage, before a charge is filed. More fundamentally, the constitutional wrong in a media parade is not confined to the possibility of influencing a judicial officer. Public humiliation, misuse of personal data and official prejudgment can violate dignity, privacy and the presumption of innocence independently of any demonstrable effect on the eventual tribunal.

Finally, agency communication practices are inconsistent. Some public statements use cautious language such as “suspected”, “alleged” or “investigation is ongoing”; others announce criminal responsibility in categorical terms. A rights-protective criminal justice system should not leave such a fundamental distinction to the discretion or communication style of individual spokespersons.

The Case for Enforceable Limits on Official Criminal-Justice Communications

A proportionality-based framework offers a coherent way to regulate pre-trial communications. Before an agency publishes a suspect’s name, image, personal information or alleged confession, it should be required to identify a legitimate objective and demonstrate that the disclosure is suitable, necessary and proportionate to that objective. Legitimate purposes may include locating a fugitive, protecting the public from an immediate risk, identifying unknown victims or witnesses, or correcting materially false information that threatens an ongoing investigation.

Routine publicity designed primarily to showcase arrests, demonstrate institutional effectiveness or generate public approval should not satisfy that standard where less intrusive means are available. The public can ordinarily be informed that an arrest has occurred, the nature of the allegation and the procedural status of the matter without a staged parade, inflammatory description or declaration of guilt.

International human-rights standards reinforce the same principle. Article 14(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that everyone charged with a criminal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.^[15] The European Court of Human Rights has likewise stressed that public officials must avoid statements reflecting an opinion that a person is guilty before a court has established guilt.^[16] These standards support a simple rule of institutional communication: authorities may explain what is alleged and what procedural steps have occurred, but they should not announce what only a court can determine.

The Attorney-General of the Federation has constitutional responsibility for federal prosecutions and may institute, take over or discontinue criminal proceedings under section 174 of the Constitution.^[17] Within that constitutional setting, the Attorney-General is well placed to promote uniform prosecutorial communication standards across federal agencies. Such standards should require neutral terminology, limit the publication of identifying material to defined circumstances, prohibit the public staging of suspects as evidence of institutional success, and forbid releasing alleged confessions before their legal status has been tested.

Judicial protection should complement institutional reform. Courts hearing fundamental-rights applications should be prepared, where the legal threshold is satisfied, to restrain threatened publications before irreversible harm occurs. Preventive relief is particularly important in the digital environment, where repetition magnifies the effect of an initial disclosure.

Recommendations

1. Adopt a statutory rule on pre-trial publicity. The ACJA should be amended, or appropriate subsidiary legislation enacted, to regulate the publication and public display of a suspect’s name, image, alleged confession and other identifying information before conviction. Any exception should be tied to a demonstrable public-interest purpose such as public safety, locating a suspect or obtaining essential investigative assistance.
2. Introduce a binding federal communications protocol. The Attorney-General of the Federation should develop a uniform protocol for federal prosecutorial and law-enforcement agencies. Public statements should be confined to verified procedural facts and allegations expressed in neutral language, with an express prohibition on language that declares or implies guilt.
3. Prohibit staged media parades. Agencies should distinguish evidential identification procedures from media display. Agencies should not present a suspect to journalists or camera crews merely to publicise an arrest or investigation.
4. Restrict publication of alleged confessions. No agency should broadcast or publish a purported confession before arraignment or before a court has had the opportunity, where contested, to determine its voluntariness and admissibility.
5. Create clear internal responsibility. Each agency should designate the officer or office authorised to approve public communications about criminal investigations and impose disciplinary sanctions for unauthorised or prejudicial disclosures.
6. Strengthen preventive judicial remedies. Courts applying the Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules should, in appropriate cases, treat threatened pre-trial publicity as capable of causing irreparable constitutional harm and consider urgent interim relief where the applicable requirements are met.
7. Provide effective remedies for completed violations. Damages should reflect the seriousness, reach and persistence of wrongful publicity, including the amplification caused by official social-media publication. Where practicable, courts should also consider corrective orders requiring the responsible agency to publish the outcome of proceedings with reasonable prominence.
8. Develop professional guidance for media reporting. The Nigerian Bar Association, the Nigeria Union of Journalists and relevant public institutions should promote guidance on responsible reporting of pending criminal matters, including the use of neutral language and the distinction between allegation and guilt.

Conclusion

The presumption of innocence is most vulnerable before trial, when public authorities possess significant information, coercive power and access to the media, while the suspect has not yet had the opportunity to answer the allegation in court. Nigeria’s constitutional order does not permit the State to replace adjudication with publicity. Sections 34, 36 and 37 of the Constitution, the African Charter and the ACJA collectively require a criminal process that respects dignity, fair hearing, privacy and legal innocence until guilt is proved.

The central problem is therefore not the absence of legal principle but the absence of sufficiently precise and enforceable rules governing official communication. Nigerian courts have already condemned media parades that prejudge suspects. The next step is to convert those constitutional principles into a coherent preventive framework that regulates what agencies may disclose, why they may disclose it, who may authorise disclosure and what consequences follow from abuse.

Public confidence in criminal justice is not strengthened by dramatic arrests or premature declarations of guilt. It is strengthened when investigative and prosecutorial institutions demonstrate that they can pursue crime vigorously without abandoning the rights that distinguish lawful prosecution from public condemnation. Until pre-trial communications are brought within clear, proportionate and enforceable limits, the presumption of innocence will remain secure in constitutional text but vulnerable in public practice.

Reference

1. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), s 36(5); African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, Cap A9, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, art 7(1)(b). ↑
2. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), s 36(5). ↑
3. ibid ss 34, 35, 36(1) and 37. ↑
4. African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, Cap A9, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, arts 5 and 7(1)(b). ↑
5. Abacha v Fawehinmi (2000) 6 NWLR (Pt 660) 228 (SC). ↑
6. Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015, s 8(1). ↑
7. ibid s 15(1). ↑
8. European Convention on Human Rights, art 8; Pretty v United Kingdom (2002) 35 EHRR 1; Ünal Tekeli v Turkey App no 29865/96 (ECtHR, 16 November 2004). ↑
9. Margari v Greece App no 36705/16 (ECtHR, 20 June 2023) paras 53–60. ↑
10. Ariana Tanoos, ‘Shielding the Presumption of Innocence from Pretrial Media Coverage’ (2017) 50 Indiana Law Review 997, 997–1022; Rachel Luberda, ‘The Fourth Branch of the Government: Evaluating the Media’s Role in Overseeing the Independent Judiciary’ (2008) 22 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 507. ↑
11. Ndukwem Chiziri Nice v Attorney-General of the Federation and Another (2007) CHR 218, 232 (FHC). ↑
12. Dyot Bayi and 14 Others v Federal Republic of Nigeria (2004–2009) CCJLER 245, 265 (ECOWAS CCJ). ↑
13. Ottoh Ofem Obono v Inspector-General of Police, Commissioner of Police, Lagos State and Deputy Superintendent Itigila Udo Suit No FHC/CA/CS/91/2009 (Federal High Court, Calabar, Chukwujekwu Aneke J, 18 July 2011). ↑
14. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), s 46; Fundamental Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules 2009. ↑
15. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, art 14(2). ↑
16. See, eg, Allenet de Ribemont v France (1995) 20 EHRR 557, para 35; Bédat v Switzerland App no 56925/08 (ECtHR Grand Chamber, 29 March 2016) para 51. ↑
17. Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), s 174. ↑