Rethinking Public Compensation to Crime Victims in Nigeria’s Jurisprudence: Justifications for State Compensation and A Comparative Analysis

As it stands today, Nigeria has no crime victims’ compensation or reparation schemes, and there are no laws throughout the thirty-six states of the Federation placing obligations or duties on governments, states or federal to pay compensation to crime victims who suffered crimes of violent nature. Although, crime victims have been instrumental in criminological discourse; they have been forgotten and neglected and therefore denied due recognition in Nigeria. The major research problems are the unavailability of state compensatory schemes for victims of crime in Nigeria. The second research problem is the lack of political will on the part of Nigerian government to enact into law the Bill before the Nigerian National Assembly since 2011 on the Remedies and Rights of crime victims. The purpose of the study is to hold the Nigerian government accountable like other nations of the world to fulfil its constitutional duties to the citizenry in terms of protecting innocent subjects from criminals. Several nations of the world have moved ahead with time in matters of crime victims’ compensations, Nigeria cannot afford to lag behind in such issue of international dimensions. In this connection, the article dissects the need for legislations in Nigeria’s jurisprudence with a view to making statutory provisions for Nigerian citizens who suffered criminal injuries such murder, rape, robbery, and carjacking etc as a result of crime. The paper further examined the genesis of crime victims’ compensation, and its justifications. The paper in addition beamed its search lens on foreign jurisdictions from a comparative point of view for the purposes of advancing legal arguments in support of crime victims’ compensation programmes in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria.