Offence Of Conspiracy

Conspiracy is an agreement between two or many persons to do an unlawful act, or to carry out a lawful act through by an unlawful means. This is said to be a matter of inference to be deduced from certain criminal acts of the suspects, which were carried out in pursuance of an apparent criminal purpose in common between parties, which are hardly confined to one place. Therefore, failure to prove a substantive offence does not, ordinarily make conviction for conspiracy in any way inappropriate. In other words conspiracy is independent of the actual offence which they conspired to commit. See Kaza V. State (2008) 5 SCM 70, (2008) 7 NWLR (Pt 1095) 125.
According to the provision of Section 516 of the criminal code, anyone who conspires to commit a felony would except another punishment is provided, be liable to imprisonment of seven years. If the felony to be committed is one that has a punishment, that is less than seven years, that will be the punishment for the conspiracy. If the conspiracy is done regarding an act which is not a felony, Section 517 CC provides that such persons would be liable for a misdemeanor and would be imprisoned for two years. It should be noted that an offender for the offence of conspiracy cannot be arrested without a warrant. The conspiracy to commit an offence is separate and distinct offence from the actual commission of the offence.
In order to establish the offence of conspiracy, there are some ingredients required to be proved. These ingredients were provided for in the case of Legi Mohammed V. The State 2014 LPELR 24311 CA. In this case the court per Uwa J CA provided that the prosecution must prove the following for a conviction of conspiracy.
An agreement between two or more persons to do or cause to be done some illegal act or some act which is not illegal by illegal, means.
Individual participation in the act by each of the accused persons.
Note that merely associating with people known to be involved in crime doesn’t make you a conspirator. For instance just because your friend tells you he is going to burglarize a house doesn’t mean you are part of the conspiracy. Not unless you also agree to participate. In most jurisdiction at least one co-conspirator must take some concreate step in furtherance of the plan. In Oladejo V. State (1994) 6 NWLR (Pt 348) R 107 at 127, the court stated t hat “… under the penal code more agreement does not amount to conspiracy unless there has been an overt act done in the execution or pursuit of the agreement.” Also in Abiodoye V. State the Court of Appeal, in distinguishing conspiracy under the penal code from conspiracy under the criminal code stated that whilst under the penal code criminal conspiracy involves an agreement to do an illegal act and in addition, the doing of the act in pursuance thereof under the criminal code, it is the agreement to do an unlawful act that constitutes the offence of conspiracy.
For the persecution to succeed in proving the offence of conspiracy, it must prove the conspiracy as described in the charge and that the accused persons were engaged in it or prove the circumstance from which the judge may infer or presume it. To prove the existence of conspiracy, in pursuance of a criminal purpose held in common between them. Since privacy are secrecy an the elements of criminal conspiracy.

Nkechi Bright Ewere