CONTEMPORARY LAW OF EVIDENCE IN NIGERIA

Description

This book “CONTEMPORARY LAW OF EVIDENCE NIGERIA” by Prof. Nnamdi O. Obiaraeri is a sanguine effort by the author to meaningfully contribute to the development of an autochthonous Nigerian evidentiary rule based on a diagnostic and functional analysis of the myriads of provisions contained in the Evidence Act, 2011. This is a well- structured twenty four chapter book that has comprehensively and exhaustively treated all the basic and intricate or complex principles of the provisions contained in the two hundred and fifty nine sections of the Evidence Act, 2011.To make the provisions germane and of practical professional utility, plethora of decisions of the superior courts in Nigeria especially the Supreme Court (the apex court) and the Court of Appeal were cited, considered and ingeniously applied where appropriate, as judicial authority in the elucidation or illumination of the principles and procedures enunciated in the Evidence Act, 2011. It is indisputable that before the passage of the Evidence Act, 2011, our evidentiary rules relied on or leaned heavily in favour of foreign jurisprudence, statutes, decided cases or judicial precedents and textbooks. However, the “circumstance of birth”, language pattern and clear intendment of the Evidence Act, 2011 marks it out as a homegrown legislation which does not intend to place unnecessary reliance on foreign books, foreign legislations or practice and procedure elsewhere.