Senate passes bill prescribing life imprisonment for kidnappers

The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill prescribing life jail for persons who commit offences of kidnapping.

Before now, the law stipulated only 10 years of jail term for kidnappers.

The bill, tagged ‘The Criminal Code Act (Amendment) Bill, 2020’ sponsored by Oluremi Tinubu (APC, Lagos Central), had passed second reading in the Senate on Tuesday, 26 November 2019.

Also, the Bill as amended and passed by the Senate has now approved deletion of the limitation period for the prosecution of defilement. It now holds that anyone who commits rape can be prosecuted any time the matter is filed.

It further prescribed that there should be no gender bias in rape offences, explaining that a man or woman could be raped.

The passage of the bill followed presentation of report by the chairman of Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Opeyemi Bamidele, during plenary.

The bill sponsor, Tinubu, had explained that the Bill sought to delete certain provisions of Section 218 on defilement which states that “A prosecution for either of the offences defined in this section shall be begun within two months after the offence is committed” imposed a limit for the prosecution of offences on defilement and created a huge margin for inaccuracy”.

Section 221 of the bill which the Senate also deleted deals with offences against morality.

The provision states that:(1) “Any person who has or attempts to have unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl being of or above thirteen years and under sixteen years of age” and

(2) knowing a woman or girl to be an idiot or imbecile, has or attempts to have unlawful carnal knowledge of her; is guilty of a misdemeanor, and is liable to imprisonment for two years, with or without caning.

Senate said that subsection (1) of the bill is amended to include a “Minor”, and the terms “imbecile” and “idiot” in subsection (2) connote derogatory remarks and therefore are substituted with the word “mentally challenged”.

In addition, Section 357 which deals with sexual assaults on females is amended to indicate incidences of non-consensual sex perpetrated against a boy or man, whereas, Section 364 of the Principal Act is amended to proffer life sentences for persons found guilty of kidnapping.

Senate said the amendment and passage of the bill became necessary due to incessant cases of kidnapping, rape and defilement across the country.