Emergency Treatment and Physician Liability under Nigeria’s Gunshot Act 2017: a Constitutional and Criminal Justice Analysis

Abstract

Purpose— This article examines the legal framework regulating emergency treatment of gunshot victims in Nigeria and identifies why the Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Act 2017 has not stopped the practice of demanding police clearance before treatment.

Design/methodology/approach — The study adopts a doctrinal method, analysing the Constitution, the 2017 Act, the National Health Act 2014, the Criminal Code, the Penal Code, the Nigeria Police Act 2020 and the African Charter as domesticated, together with the decisions of the Supreme Court on medical autonomy and the sanctity of life. A functional comparative method is applied to South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and the United States, jurisdictions selected because each has confronted the same conflict between emergency care and administrative or financial gatekeeping.

Findings — Four findings are made. First, the 2017 Act is not free-standing: it duplicates, and is reinforced by, section 20 of the National Health Act 2014, a parallel prohibition on refusal of emergency treatment which the existing literature has largely ignored and which extends beyond gunshot injury. Secondly, the fear of accessory liability which physicians report is legally unfounded, because accessory liability under section 10 of the Criminal Code requires a purpose of enabling the offender to escape punishment, and a physician acting under statutory compulsion cannot possess that purpose. Thirdly, the constitutional foundation of the duty to treat lies not in section 33 alone, whose positive dimension is undeveloped in Nigerian jurisprudence, but in the combined operation of sections 33 and 34 with article 16 of the African Charter, which is justiciable in Nigeria by domestication. Fourthly, the Act contains an unexamined internal conflict: a statute entitled “Compulsory Treatment” sits uneasily with the Supreme Court’s recognition in Medical and Dental Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal v Okonkwo of the right of a competent adult to refuse treatment.

Originality/value — The article is the first to analyse the 2017 Act alongside section 20 of the National Health Act as a single duty-imposing regime, to test the accessory-liability fear against the elements of section 10, and to identify the autonomy problem manifest in the Act’s compulsory framing. It proposes a statutory immunity clause, a digital notification system, and an inter-agency protocol.