By: Chidi Ezenwafor, Esq., MCArb, FIMC
Past Secretary, NBA Abuja Branch
Abstract
The Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Injuries Act 2017: A Legal and Jurisprudential Inquiry into Compliance, Enforcement, and Comparative Experience
The enactment of the Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Injuries Act 2017: A Legal and Jurisprudential Inquiry into Compliance, Enforcement, and Comparative Experience (the Gunshot Act) sought to end a tragic narrative in Nigeria’s public health and criminal justice space. Additionally, nearly eight years after its passage, reports of hospital refusals persist. This prompted the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) on 25 October 2025 to issue a fresh directive to all police formations to ensure compliance. This paper examines the historical underpinnings of pre-2017 practice, the legal justification once relied upon, and the need to codify preservation of life as a constitutional imperative. It also examines compliance after the directive, the judicial attitude to the Act, and Nigeria’s position compared with other jurisdictions.
- Introduction
Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Injuries Act 2017: A Legal and Jurisprudential Inquiry into Compliance, Enforcement, and Comparative Experience
Indeed, law is often reactive and responds to social pathology.
However, the Act 2017 emerged from a deeply human problem.
For years, hospitals in Nigeria refused or delayed gunshot treatment without a police report, based on a misconception that it risked liability or harassment.
Moreover, this legislative intervention aimed to realign practice with the right to life and the duty of care.
However, legislation alone seldom transforms entrenched habits. The IGP’s directive of 25th October 2025 illustrates that the problem persists, suggesting a structural and cultural inertia that law alone cannot instantly cure.
- Historical Antecedents and the Misconstruction of Law
The pre-Act practice had no genuine legal foundation. Nowhere did the Criminal Code, Penal Code, or any police regulation expressly prohibit medical personnel from attending to a wounded person absent a police report. Yet, through years of official misunderstanding, a pernicious convention arose — doctors, fearing arrest or interrogation, demanded police clearance before saving lives.
This practice stood in stark conflict with two cardinal principles:
1. The sanctity of life — guaranteed under Section 33(1) of the 1999 Constitution, and
2. The professional obligation of care — enshrined in the Code of Medical Ethics in Nigeria.
The courts had long recognized the duty of professionals whose calling affects life to act with diligence, but in the gunshot context, the law was simply misread. The 2017 Act thus became not merely remedial, but declaratory — restating what the law ought always to have been.
- The Legal Architecture of the Gunshot Act
The Act codifies four fundamental propositions:
1. A mandatory duty to treat: Every hospital, public or private, must accept and provide immediate care to any person with a gunshot injury, whether or not a police report has been obtained.
2. Mandatory notification: The hospital must inform the nearest police station after commencing treatment — transforming the previous sequencing from “clearance before care” to “notification after intervention.”
3. Protection for Good Samaritans and medical personnel: No person who renders assistance in good faith may be harassed or subjected to arrest for doing so.
4. Penal sanction for non-compliance: Failure to comply attracts criminal liability, signaling the legislature’s intent that this is no mere guideline but a binding duty.
In effect, the statute reconciles law enforcement with humanitarian necessity: it ensures that the interest of criminal investigation does not eclipse the constitutional primacy of life.
- The Inspector-General’s Directive and Its Juridical Significance
The IGP’s 2025 directive to all police formations reaffirming compliance with the Act is not a mere administrative memo; it is a restatement of binding law from the head of the police institution. It signifies that the executive branch acknowledges a pattern of non-observance and seeks to operationalize statutory command through institutional discipline.
From a constitutional standpoint, such a directive reinforces Section 215(3) of the 1999 Constitution, which empowers the IGP to issue lawful orders to the police. In that sense, it operates as a bridge between legislative intent and administrative implementation. Yet, directives alone cannot substitute for the machinery of enforcement — training, prosecution, and judicial exemplarity.
- Compliance and the Enforcement Deficit
Although the legislation is clear and enforcement is strong, compliance remains inconsistent. Moreover, field reports, media investigations, and anecdotes show hospitals still require police presence before treatment.
Additionally, fear of official reprisal remains potent among medical personnel. Weak enforcement shows no publicly reported prosecutions concluded under the Act.
Institutional inertia persists; many hospitals lack SOPs aligned with the Act.
Thus, the problem has moved from ambiguity of law to failure of implementation — a classic enforcement gap.
- Judicial Precedents and the Jurisprudence of Silence
It is remarkable, and perhaps troubling, that no reported judicial decision squarely applies or interprets the Gunshot Act eight years after its enactment. The superior courts have neither pronounced upon its penal provisions nor tested the liability of erring institutions under it.
This judicial silence carries interpretive implications. It suggests that enforcement has remained administrative or extra-judicial rather than litigated. Yet, related jurisprudence on medical negligence, professional misconduct, and the constitutional duty to preserve life provides a doctrinal backdrop against which the Act operates.
In Medical and Dental Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal v. Okonkwo, the Supreme Court affirmed that professional autonomy and patient rights must yield to the constitutional sanctity of life where public interest demands. Though not a gunshot case, the principle resonates here: the State has a legitimate interest in preventing avoidable death.
Similarly, in tort jurisprudence, the duty of care in emergencies has long been recognized. A physician who unreasonably refuses assistance may be liable in negligence or subject to disciplinary sanction. The Gunshot Act converts that moral duty into a statutory one.
Hence, while Nigerian courts have yet to test the Act directly, the ratio decidendi of cognate cases already provides a normative foundation for its enforcement.
- Comparative Jurisprudence
A comparative glance shows that Nigeria’s legislative position aligns with global best practice but lags in enforcement:
• United States (EMTALA, 1986): Hospitals receiving federal funds are under strict obligation to provide emergency treatment irrespective of ability to pay or police status. Violations attract civil penalties and private enforcement rights.
• India: Judicial activism through the Supreme Court’s decision in Parmanand Katara v. Union of India compelled hospitals to treat accident victims immediately.
• United Kingdom: No equivalent statute exists, but the General Medical Council’s ethical guidance obliges doctors to prioritize saving life; police notification follows treatment, not precedes it.
These jurisdictions confirm a shared civilized consensus: law enforcement cannot stand between the victim and the physician.
- The Necessity of the Act: A Juridical Defense
Was legislation necessary? Strictly speaking, constitutional and professional obligations already required emergency care. Yet, legislative codification was pragmatically indispensable because the culture of fear and institutional misunderstanding could not be corrected by judicial sermon or executive circular alone.
The Act therefore serves a dual function: declaratory (affirming what law and ethics already required) and coercive (imposing criminal sanction for non-compliance). Its promulgation restored coherence between the lex scripta and the moral architecture of the right to life.
- Towards Effective Implementation
For the Act to transcend rhetoric:
1. Prosecution: Selective but decisive prosecution of offenders will create deterrence.
2. Institutional training: Continuous police-hospital interface workshops under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of Health.
3. Hospital SOPs: Mandatory integration of the Act into emergency room protocol.
4. Judicial pronouncement: Courts should take judicial notice of the Act’s provisions and uphold them as part of the constitutional protection of life.
5. Public awareness: Clear messaging that helping a gunshot victim is lawful and protected.
- Conclusion
The Compulsory Treatment and Care for Victims of Gunshot Injuries Act, 2017 represents a humane assertion of law’s moral purpose — to protect life even in the midst of crime. Its existence was necessary; its enforcement remains inadequate. The Inspector-General’s directive of 25th October 2025 rekindles attention but must now be followed by demonstrable institutional compliance and judicial engagement.
The courts, as guardians of constitutional values, must not remain silent when the right to life is imperiled by administrative lethargy. Every refusal of treatment without lawful excuse is not merely medical negligence — it is a constitutional betrayal. Until the Act is lived in daily practice, its noble purpose remains only half fulfilled.