The death of Titilayo Akindele inside a Federal High Court in Benin City on Tuesday 31st March has raised urgent legal and ethical questions about custodial practices in Nigeria, particularly the obligations of law enforcement agencies to uphold the rights and welfare of suspects.
Mrs Akindele, a 52-year-old, was prosecuted for alleged drug peddling by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) following her arrest in January. By the time she was brought before the court, she had reportedly spent nearly three months in custody without arraignment. That alone places the circumstances of her detention under scrutiny.
She was first arraigned on Monday 30th March, but proceedings did not go forward after she complained of ill health. The court directed her to present a medical report, but she was unable to do so. When she was re-arraigned the following day, witnesses say her condition had visibly deteriorated. According to lawyers present in court, she struggled to sit or stand as proceedings continued.
Moments after her case was called, she collapsed.
Despite efforts to revive her, she was later confirmed dead. The court subsequently adjourned all matters for the day in her honour, and her body was transferred to a mortuary.
In a video circulated by the Edo State Broadcasting Service, lawyers alleged that despite clear signs of distress, the court proceedings were not halted. One lawyer recounted drawing the attention of an NDLEA officer to Mrs Akindele’s condition, only to be met with indifference. When she eventually slumped, the officer reportedly assumed she was feigning illness.
The NDLEA has since rejected claims of negligence. The state commander, Mitchell Ofoyeju, stated that there was no indication Mrs Akindele was unfit to stand trial. According to him, she walked unaided to the vehicle that conveyed her to court and showed no visible signs of distress at the time.
Yet even if one accepts that account, it does little to resolve the fundamental issue raised by this case.
Under Nigerian law, a suspect’s rights do not begin at trial; they exist from the moment of arrest. The Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) is clear on this point. A person in custody retains the right to dignity, humane treatment, and access to medical care. Detention does not suspend these protections. It does not reduce a person to a body to be processed through the system.
Section 35 of the Nigerian Constitution (CFRN 1999) further guarantees the right to personal liberty. This includes the right to be informed, in writing, of the reason for arrest, and the right to be brought before a court within a reasonable time, typically defined as 24 to 48 hours. It also includes the right to bail and the broader right to a fair trial: public proceedings, adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence, and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Measured against these standards, the facts surrounding Mrs Akindele’s detention raise difficult questions. Three months in custody without arraignment is not a procedural oversight; it is a direct violation of human rights. Allegations that she received little or no medical attention while in custody, if substantiated, would amplify the gravity of the breach of her human rights.
What happened in that courtroom, then, cannot be treated as an isolated incident. It reflects a pattern in which custody is treated as a form of punishment rather than a temporary legal status. The assumption of guilt is enforced early, and with it, a sense of entitlement among custodial officers to impose informal, extrajudicial penalties before the courts have even spoken.
This pattern is not limited to one agency.
In 2024, during the Nigerian government’s crackdown on cryptocurrency operations, two executives linked to Binance, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, were detained under circumstances that drew international attention. Both men were held at a government facility in Abuja, their passports confiscated, without being formally charged for weeks.
During their confinement, they were reportedly denied private access to legal counsel, with government officials present throughout their detention. This effectively undermined their ability to prepare a defence, a core component of the right to a fair trial. At one point, Anjarwalla fell ill and required hospital treatment, only to be returned to detention immediately afterward.
Whatever the broader political or economic motivations behind that crackdown, the legal implications are difficult to defend. Detention without charge, restriction of legal access, and inadequate medical consideration are not grey areas in Nigerian law. They are direct violations.
The recurrence of such incidents shows that the issue is not simply one of individual misconduct, but of institutional culture.
A 2008 Amnesty International report, drawing on inmate testimonies and stakeholder interviews, described Nigeria’s detention system as one in which human rights violations are not incidental but systemic. Courts fail to ensure timely trials, facilities are unable to meet basic health standards, overcrowding, inadequate funding, and the result is a custodial environment that often falls below the minimum standards set by the United Nations for the treatment of prisoners.
Approximately 65 percent of Nigeria’s prison population consists of individuals awaiting trial, many of whom have spent years languishing in detention without a final determination of their cases. In effect, the system creates a parallel punishment track, one that operates independently of conviction.
Conditions within these facilities compound the problem. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, limited access to food and medical care, and restricted contact with family all contribute to an environment that is not only harsh but actively harmful. For many detainees, the experience of custody itself becomes the sentence before they even get to trial.
Mrs Akindele’s death is not just a tragic event tied to one prosecution. It sits within a broader legal and institutional failure to reconcile law enforcement practices with the rights framework that lawmakers claim governs them.
The NDLEA, like the police and other enforcement bodies, operates within a constitutional order that places clear limits on its powers. Those limits are not optional, and they are not suspended by suspicion. They exist precisely to prevent the kind of outcome that unfolded in Benin.
There is a predictable tendency, after incidents like this, for authorities to focus on the final moment: the collapse in court, the unsuccessful attempts at resuscitation, and the official statements that follow. But the more important question lies in the weeks and months that led up to that moment. In the length of detention without arraignment, the reported lack of medical care, the apparent normalisation of indifference.
Legal systems are often judged not by how they treat the powerful, but by how they treat those with the least protection. By that measure, the Nigerian legal system is guilty. If the rights guaranteed under Nigerian law are to matter in practice, they must extend beyond the courtroom and into the everyday realities of detention.
0 Comments
Add your own hot takes