3PLR – EFFIONG UDO UKUT V. THE QUEEN
POLICY, PRACTICE AND PUBLISHING, LAW REPORTS 3PLR
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EFFIONG UDO UKUT
V.
THE QUEEN
FEDERAL SUPREME COURT OF NIGERIA
F.S.C. 337/1960
12TH JANUARY, 1960
3PLR/1960/90 (SC)
OTHER CITATIONS
BEFORE THEIR LORDSHIPS
LIONEL BRETT, F.J. (Presided)
JOHN IDOWU CONRAD TAYLOR, F.J.
SIR VAHE BAIRAMIAN, F.J. (Read the Judgment of the Court)
REPRESENTATION:
O. BENSON – for the Appellant.
O. NWOKEDI, Senior Crown Counsel -for the Respondent.
MAIN ISSUES
CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE: – Murder – Proof – Defence of provocation – Whether desertion of matrimonial home by wife amounts to provocation
ETHICS – LEGAL PRACTITIONER – APPEAL: -Counsel asserting there is nothing he can argue in favour of convict – propriety thereof
CUSTOMARY LAW:- Marriages – Arranged marriages and remarriage – Pregnant woman given out by her father to the mother of 2nd prospective but absent husband – Murder arising therefrom in the hands of 1st husband – How treated
CHILDEN AND WOMEN LAW:- Wife killing – 4 month pregnant woman killed by own husband after her father took her to the mother of another prospective but absent husband – Whether desertion of husband to secure a second arranged marriage amounts to provocation– How treated
MAIN JUDGMENT
BAIRAMIAN, F.J. (Delivering the Judgment of the Court):
The appellant was convicted in the High Court of the Eastern Region, at Ikot Ekpene, by Kaine, J., of murdering Unwa Ikon on the 23rd May, 1960. The father of the deceased lady had taken her, four days before her death, to the house of the witness Uwa Umo, the mother of one Effiong, to be married to Effiong. Effiong was not at home when the deceased was brought to his mother, nor had he returned before she was killed.
The appellant went to Effiong’s mother and claimed the deceased to be his wife, adding that she was four months advanced in pregnancy. He went there again in the afternoon; the deceased was picking nuts; he asked Effiong’s mother for water, and, when she went to bring him some, he struck the deceased with his matchet in several parts of her body; she died on the spot.
The reason he gave in his statement to the Police was that “the father took her from me and gave her to a lover.” Giving evidence at his trial, he said that the deceased spat on his face, and that she and Effiong’s mother knocked him down and beat him, and that when he got up on his knees he picked up a matchet and cut the deceased to ward them off.
The trial Judge was of opinion that the defence made in the appellant’s evidence was an afterthought; the Judge believed the evidence of Effiong’s mother was true; and in his judgment the fact that the deceased had deserted her husband was not a sufficient provocation for the husband – the appellant – to kill his wife. It was in truth a premeditated murder; and Counsel for the appellant said that there was nothing he could argue in his favour.
The appeal was dismissed at the hearing on the 9th January, and the above are the reasons of this Court for its decision.
Appeal Dismissed.
