exhibit A and A1 or rather not to place any weight on exhibit A and
A1 because they are being recorded in the absence of a legal
practitioner. In the case of AKINWANDE v STATE (2019) LPELR
48378 CA, the court of appeal held as follows: “The appellant
counsel argued and submitted that there is no evidence before the
trial court that the procedure adopted by the police to obtain the
confessional statement of the appellant was transparent. It was not
obtained in the presence of his legal practitioner or solicitor to prove
that the confession was voluntary. I’m bold to say that there is no
any decision of this court or the apex court which stated that any
confessional statement not made in the presence of a legal
practitioner must be rejected. However if the voluntariness of a
confessional statement is in issue and the statement was obtained
in the absence of a legal practitioner, then the court will take that
into consideration in determining the weight to attach to such a
statement”.
It is to be noted that the voluntariness of exhibit A and A1 is not in
issue in this case. The learned defence counsel only raised the issue
of voluntariness of exhibit A and A1 because of the issue of insanity
raised by the defence and stated that because of that issue of
25