<![CDATA[Purpose: This article compares Nigeria’s Penal Code and Criminal Code to determine whether their inherited differences in terminology, classification, and substantive rules remain justified within the country’s contemporary constitutional order, and to propose a pathway toward selective harmonization.Methodology: The study adopts a qualitative doctrinal and documentary design, examining the Criminal Code Act, the Penal Code Law of 1959, the Penal Code Federal Provisions Act, constitutional provisions, judicial authorities, and peer reviewed legal scholarship published mainly between 2021 and 2026.Results: Both Codes regulate comparable conduct through different statutory architectures; divergences in the treatment of homicide, property offences, defences, and sentencing produce practical consequences for prosecutors, courts, and cross-jurisdictional practice, even though constitutional commitments to legality and fair hearing remain consistent across both regimes.Conclusions: A realistic reform agenda should pursue harmonization of foundational principles of criminal responsibility rather than wholesale unification, preserving legitimate state legislative competence while reducing avoidable divergence.Limitations: The study relies on published statutes, judicial decisions, and secondary legal literature rather than primary empirical data, and its doctrinal method cannot fully capture informal variation in how the Codes are applied at trial level.Contributions: The article offers legislators, judicial educators, and reform bodies a comparative framework for evaluating which statutory differences serve legitimate purposes and which merely perpetuate historical fragmentation.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
