Judicial Approach to Uxoricide Cases in Nigeria

The magic in love is the failure to acknowledge the fact that it may one day come to an end and for some couples it ended in tragedy. When love became a trap, some killed to escape. To the unfortunate soul who is now deceased, it merely fortifies the saying that ?we are easily duped by those we love. [1] There is a litany of reported cases in which men had been accused, arraigned and sometimes convicted of killing their wives or female lovers. The thrust of this paper is an examination of these reported cases of domestic violence where same unfortunately resulted in fatalities, to wit; the death of the woman and this is what forms the focus of the paper in which the writer strives to analyze and rationalize the mind and reasoning of the court as evidenced in its judgment with the aim of outlining broad principles of law deducible from Nigerian case law on the issue of uxoricide. The paper is discussed under sub-heads like provocation, circumstantial evidence, interpretation of the Constitution, identification of the accused, insanity, motive and admissibility of confessional statements which were some of the defences and issues of law raised by the accused persons as distilled from the cases discussed. In conclusion, the paper recommends the position of Islamic Mu?amalat (Human Transactions) on divorce to the effect that ?divorce is the most hateful but lawful thing in the sight of the Almighty Allah [2] and it is a better path to tread when love begins to wane between couples than wait till the situation deteriorates or culminates into tragedy.