President Bola Tinubu has forwarded a sweeping criminal justice bill to the House of Representatives. The bill seeks to replace the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, which has governed Nigeria’s federal criminal procedure since 2015.
The proposed Administration of Criminal Justice Bill, 2026, targets long-standing bottlenecks in Nigeria’s courts. These include prolonged trials and weak coordination among law enforcement and prosecuting agencies.
Bill Scraps Trial-Within-Trial, Targets Court Delays
Among the most significant changes is the abolition of the trial-within-trial procedure. Under the existing law, courts must pause proceedings to conduct a separate mini-hearing whenever the admissibility of a confessional statement is challenged, a process that has dragged high-profile corruption and terrorism cases on for months.
The new bill proposes that confessional statements be provisionally admitted during trial. Prosecutors would establish voluntariness of such statements in the course of proceedings, and any objections would be ruled on at the point of judgment rather than mid-trial.
Tinubu transmitted the bill to the House speaker on Wednesday, stating it was designed to fix legal, procedural, and institutional gaps that have undermined the 2015 Act across the past decade.
“I am pleased to transmit to the House of Representatives for consideration a bill for an act to repeal the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, and enact the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2026,” the president wrote in his transmittal letter.
He identified persistent delays in criminal investigations and prosecution, poor deployment of technology, weak inter-agency coordination, ineffective case management, and inadequate compliance monitoring as the core failures of the existing framework.
The bill, he said, has been reviewed by a team of law officers with extensive experience in criminal law, criminal procedure, and legislative drafting.
Sex Offenders Register and Witness Support Fund Among New Provisions
The criminal justice bill also introduces a national Sex Offenders Register to be domiciled in the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation. Under the proposal, particulars of convicted sex offenders would be published, and prosecuting and law enforcement agencies would be required to transmit relevant information to the register.
A Witness Support Fund is also proposed to guarantee prompt payment of witness expenses by the Attorney-General of the Federation and other prosecuting agencies, addressing a long-documented reason why witnesses fail to appear in Nigerian courts.
Other reforms in the bill include the introduction of a plea form to speed up arraignment, a requirement that courts determine no-case submissions within 21 days after the close of the prosecution’s case, and provisions encouraging written witness depositions in appropriate circumstances.
Objections raised after plea would no longer halt proceedings. Under the proposed law, such objections would be determined alongside substantive issues at the point of judgment.
The bill also aims to strengthen case management before magistrates’ courts by requiring that witness statements, exhibits, and other relevant materials be filed alongside criminal charges at the point of arraignment.
Monitoring Council Gets Expanded Powers Under Proposed Law
The Administration of Criminal Justice Monitoring Council, which currently exists under the 2015 Act, would be restructured under the new bill. A governing board would be established comprising representatives of the judiciary, law enforcement agencies, prosecuting authorities, correctional institutions, the Nigerian Bar Association and civil society organisations.
The President would be empowered to appoint the Executive Secretary of the Council on the recommendation of the Attorney General of the Federation, while the Attorney General would also be authorized to make regulations for the effective implementation of the Act.
Transitional provisions in the bill address one of the most disruptive features of the current system, the requirement for fAssociation, when a judge dies,organizations.s transferred before delivering judgment. The bill introduces measures to eliminate this practice.
The Administration of Criminal Justice Act was signed into law by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and was then regarded as the most ambitious federal criminal procedure reform in Nigeria’s history. Over the following decade, legal practitioners and prosecutors flagged consistent gaps in implementation.
If passed by the National Assembly, the 2026 bill would represent the most comprehensive overhaul of federal criminal procedure law Nigeria has seen since that legislation came into force.
Tinubu urged the House to consider the bill without delay.
