Criminal Intimidation

The offence of criminal intimidation involves threat of injury to the person, property or reputation of the person or threat of injury to a third party (e.g. family member)property or reputation or threat of any illegal act. The main requirement of this offence is that the offender must threaten the victim. The intention to cause certain harm must also exist along with this threat. The intention must exist in the mind of the offender even if he cannot execute it.
Section 397 of the Penal Code provides that: whoever commits the offence of criminal intimidation shall be punished.
a. With imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or fine or with both and;
b. If the threat be to cause death or grievous hurt or to cause the destruction of any property by fire or to cause an offence punishable with death or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years or to impute unchastely to a woman, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years or both.
In Samuel Chidozie V. Commissioner of Police (2018) LPE LR-43602 (SC), the appellant was initially arraigned for criminal intimidation. The case of the prosecution is that the PWI, Godwin Ojike and the appellant are members of the National Union of Mobile Marketers and Advertisers of Nigeria (NUMMAN). Owing to some disagreements, the PWI pulled out of the union. The appellants and other members of the union started threatening him and warned him to pack out of Lokoja town or he would be killed.
In order to carry out their threat, the appellant along with the other members of the union started sending all kinds of strange visitors to harass him and followed the PWI, to monitor his movements and on one such occasions, two boys armed with guns visited PWI’s house and threatened to kill him. The appellant was charged for criminal intimidation contrary to Section 397 of the Penal Code.
The trial court at the end of the hearing convicted the appellant and sentenced him to a fine of N2,000.00 or 12 months imprisonment in case of default for the offence of criminal intimidation. The appellant dissatisfied appealed to the High Court, which affirmed what the trial court did and the appellant aggrieved appealed to the court of Appeal Abuja Division to contest the validity of his conviction and sentence, but the court of Appeal agreed with the High Court decision still dissatisfied the appellant appealed to the Supreme Court. The appeal was dismissed, the decision of the Court of Appeal in its affirmation of the judgement of the High Court, which in turn affirmed the judgement, conviction and sentence of the trial Magistrate Court was further affirmed.
Also note that a threat to ones reputation or to the reputation of anyone in whom that person is interested, with intent to cause harm to that person, or to cause that person to do any act which he is not illegally bound to do, or to omit to do any act which that person is legally entitled to do, as the means of avoiding the execution of such threat, commits criminal intimidation.

Nkechi Bright-Ewere