Section 322 Administration of Criminal Justice Law (ACJL) Lagos

Section 322 Administration of Criminal Justice Law of Lagos State, as amended in 2021, is about Power to postpone issue of warrant of commitment. It provides as follows:

(1) Where the person liable to pay any sum and to whom time has been given to pay either with or without a surety or sureties makes default in such payment or fails to enter into the security required by the Court, the Court may issue its warrant of commitment requiring any Police Officer to take and convey such person to prison and there deliver him to the Superintendent of Prisons, and requiring him to receive such person into the prison and imprison him with or without labour, as the case may be, for such time as shall be directed and appointed by the warrant of commitment, unless the sum of money adjudged to be paid by the order and also all other costs, charges, and expenses shall be paid.

(2) Where application is made to the Court for committing a person to prison for non-payment of any sum of money adjudged to be paid by an order, the Court may, if it deems it expedient so to do, postpone the issue of such warrant until such time and on such conditions, if any, as the Court may seem just.

(3) When the Court orders the imprisonment of any person, the Court may, if it deems fit, order that such imprisonment shall not commence immediately, but shall commence on any day not more than three months after the date of such order as the Court may fix and in such case the Court may discharge him upon his entering into a recognisance, with or without sureties, conditioned for his re-appearance
on such day to undergo such imprisonment.

(4) Any warrant of commitment issued under the provisions of this section may be executed on any day including a Sunday or a public holiday.

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