Stephen Ebiri And Another V Board Of Customs And Excis (1967)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report

BRETT,J.S.C.  

The two appellants were charged in the Magistrate’s Court of the Uyo Magisterial District with an offence contrary to section 145 (a) of the Customs and Excise Management Act, 1958 in relation to 984 cigarette lighters which were chargeable with the duty of £246. The Magistrate convicted them and imposed fines of E25 and their appeal to the High Court was dismissed. They have now appealed to this Court.

The first point argued was that it had not been shown affirmatively that the continuation of the proceedings had been sanctioned by the Board of Customs and Excise and that section 157(2) of the Customs and Excise Management Act precluded the court from proceeding to hear the charge without the consent of the persons charged, which had admittedly not been given. In the typed record of proceedings the Board of Customs and Excise Is shown as the complainant but it is not shown who lodged the charge. Following the course adopted by this court in the unreported case Ifeacho v. Board of Customs and Excise, S.C. 634/65, judgment delivered 9th June, 1966, we called for the original charge sheet and this turned out to be signed by an officer of the Department of Customs and Excise over the impress of a rubber stamp with the name of the Department.

We hold that that is sufficient prima facie evidence that the proceeding were Initiated by the Board and that, as was held in Ifeacho’s case, it was unnecessary for the Board to issue a further document sanctioning the continuation of the proceedings. This ground of appeal therefore fails.

It was then submitted that since the maximum fine to which the appellants were liable was six times the value of the goods concerned, or a sum exceeding £200, the offence was an indictable one and therefore not triable by the Magistrate with-out the consent of the accused persons under section 304 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The definition of indictable offence in section 2 of that Act originally read as follows-

“ ‘Indictable offence’ means any offence:-

(a) which on conviction may be punished by a term of imprisonment exceeding two years, or

(b) which on conviction may be punished by imposition of a fine exceeding two hundred pounds, or

(c) which is not declared by the written law creating the offence, to be punishable on summary conviction;

In the unreported case of Ejoh v. Police F.S.C. 417/62, judgment delivered 26th June, 1963, this court held that the second “or” in the definition was a mere mistake for “and” and this interpretation has now received statutory confirmation from section 2 of the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Decree, 1966 which applies throughout Nigeria. That section reads-

“2. For the removal of doubt as to the meaning of the expression “indictable offence” In the Criminal Procedure Act, the definition of that expression contained in section 2(1) of that Act, as it applies in any part of Nigeria, shall be amended so as to read as follows:-

‘ ”Indictable offence” means any offence-

(a) which on conviction may be punished by a term of imprisonment exceeding two years; or

(b) which on conviction may be punished by imposition of a fine exceeding two hundred pounds, not being an offence declared by the law creating k to be punishable on summary conviction;’