A bill seeking to enact the Plateau Penal Code on Tuesday scaled through the second reading on the floor of the State House of Assembly.
Presenting the bill for deliberation at Plenary, Majority Leader of the House, Mr Henry Yunkwap, said that the bill, if passed into law, would capture penalties for contemporary crimes.
He said that Plateau needed its own penal code because the penal code of Northern Nigeria, being used in the state, had become “out-dated and obsolete”.
He further explained that the bill, which contained 398 clauses and 31 chapters, would address primary, secondary and tertiary crimes in the state.
“Mr Speaker, considering the new dimension of crime in our present day, the need to have our own penal code law in the state is long overdue.
“The existing one, adopted from Northern Nigeria, was enacted since 1963 and has become obsolete.
“There is the dire need for us to have our own penal code so as to capture new crimes that go with our globalised world”, he said.
Contributing, the Deputy Speaker of the House, Mr Yusuf Gagdi, said that the bill was apt “especially since it is seeking to address the problems of jungle justice and administration of bad customs by some communities”.
He noted that the bill, if passed into law, would reduce petty crimes, stressing that “a lawless society is a hopeless society”.
He, therefore, called on his colleagues to give the bill an accelerated hearing and passage into law.
On his part, the Chief Whip of the House, Mr Joshua Madaki, said that the dynamism of the present society called for the enactment of the law, and declared that its importance to societal growth could not be over-emphasised.
“The bill seeks to review some existing fines to match present realities. Some fines are still N5; some N2o or N50. Such fines are certainly not realistic,” he said.
After much deliberations, the House committed the bill to its standing committees on Judiciary, Finance and Security for further scrutiny and legislative inputs.
The Speaker of the House, Mr Peter Azi, directed the to committee to ensure that a public hearing was held so to gauge the acceptability of the bill, and to also receive inputs from members of the public.
The committees are expected to present their reports within two months. (NAN)
AZA /OSA/ETS