LP Chief Flays Plea Bargain Concept

The Chairman, Labour Party (LP) in the FCT, Mr Peter Adejobi, has criticised the concept of plea bargain, and said that it encouraged corruption.

Plea bargain, according to legal experts is an instance where an accused, who stole money agrees to return some of it for lesser sentence.

Adejobi told newsmen in Abuja that plea bargain was a prepared package for the rich to enable them get away with their loots.

He said, “When ordinary people start protesting, those who seek for plea bargain will say that after all, justice has been done.

“Then with plea bargain, people believe that they can always have their way and as such this legal term cannot help to stem corruption in Nigeria.”

He said that accused persons should face the full wrath of the law to check corrupt tendency in the society, adding that plea bargain was synonymous with short cut to justice.

Adejobi, who said that justice could not be compromised, called on relevant authorities to tackle all forms of injustice in the country.

On Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), he said that its practice should be discouraged in Nigeria, as the country was not ripe for it.

“Let us look at our socio-cultural background before we can copy foreign ideas,” Adejobi said.

He called on the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), the Human Rights Watch, NGOs and other outfits in the fight against corruption, “to check the rot in the judiciary.

According to him, they should also determine to curb such corruption reminding them that “the judiciary is that arm of government that the hope of every nation rests for justice’’.

He expressed worry that “if it collapses, the nation collapses’’.