The Ogun State Government has proposed a law to abolish the long standing practice of waiting 24 or 48 hours before reporting missing persons, in a move aimed at accelerating rescue efforts and improving the chances of locating victims before they are moved or vital evidence disappears.
The proposed legislation, known as the Missing Persons Bill, is one of four criminal justice reform bills recently approved by the Ogun State Executive Council for transmission to the State House of Assembly.
Speaking on Tuesday during an interview on Frontline, a current affairs programme on Eagle 102.5 FM, Ilese Ijebu, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Oluwasina Ogungbade (SAN), said the bill would make immediate reporting of missing persons mandatory and outlaw the common practice of delaying reports.
“You probably would be aware of this practice where people will report others as missing only to be advised to wait for 24 hours or 48 hours before coming. That now is being outlawed. There’s now a duty to report as early as possible,” Ogungbade said.
He stressed that the first few hours after a disappearance are often critical to successful rescue operations.
“Research has shown that the first 24 hours are crucial in cases of missing persons,” he added.
According to the Attorney General, the bill would also impose penalties on individuals who fail to promptly report the disappearance of persons whose whereabouts they are reasonably expected to know.
“And where a person who ought to report, for example, a father who knows his child is missing, or a mother who knows her daughter is missing, fails to do so, it carries a penalty under this law,” he explained.
Ogungbade said his office regularly receives reports of missing persons involving both children and adults, but lamented that existing legal procedures often frustrate investigations due to delays in accessing critical information such as banking records, telephone data and other digital evidence.
“It’s been one challenge or the other getting access to data that would help law enforcement to track their movements,” he said.
He cited unresolved disappearance cases, including that of a former student who reportedly went missing after leaving Olabisi Onabanjo University to visit her boyfriend in Sagamu, and another woman who disappeared in Ota, noting that investigators were hampered by legal bottlenecks in obtaining information needed to trace victims.
To address the challenge, the proposed law would establish a coordinated framework involving the Ministry of Justice, the Nigeria Police Force and the judiciary to enable quicker access to records held by financial institutions, telecommunications companies and other service providers.
“There will be collaboration between my office and the Office of the Commissioner of Police that expressly is stated in the bill and also with the judiciary. This bill makes provision for the police or any law enforcement agency to apply ex parte to get certain records from service providers. But in extreme cases, the police can write directly to the person holding those records to make them available under penalty of law,” Ogungbade stated.
The Attorney General disclosed that the legislation would also introduce emergency response protocols for child abduction cases by immediately alerting transport unions, motor parks and other strategic stakeholders once a child is reported missing.
“My office will be working in concert with the Commissioner of Police of Ogun State, putting certain people on standby. Because in most cases, when you steal a child, you firstly have to transport that child outside Ogun State. So there’ll be protocols in place, for example, alerting all major car parks and transport unions,” he said.
He noted that the proposed framework would remove bureaucratic bottlenecks that often slow investigations and strengthen cooperation among security agencies, adding that such collaboration would become even more effective if state policing is eventually adopted.
Ogungbade said the overall objective of the bill is to promote prompt reporting, speed up investigations and improve the chances of locating missing persons before they are taken beyond the state’s borders.
The Attorney General also revealed that the state government is proposing a separate law to specifically criminalise ritual practices involving the use of human beings or human body parts, saying the existing legal framework, which relies mainly on murder charges and offences relating to human remains, does not adequately address the root causes of ritual killings.
“What we have all been doing in Ogun State, and I believe in other states, is to charge persons involved in ritual killings for murder and, in some cases, tampering with human remains. We normally get the sentence of death, but that does not actually address the root issues. So we feel that by having a law that actually criminalises rituals involving the use of human parts,” he said.
Expressing confidence in the proposed legislation, Ogungbade described it as a pioneering initiative capable of setting a national standard in tackling ritual killings and human sacrifice.
“It will be a first in Nigeria and I am convinced that it will be far reaching, at least to cover, once and for all, this menace of human sacrifice,” he said.
