A new bill aiming at making corporate negligence, dereliction of duty or incompetence which results in death of an employee a criminal offence, Wednesday scaled the second reading on the floor of the Senate.
Initiator of the bill tagged 'A Bill for an Act to Make Provisions Creating the Offence of Corporate Manslaughter and for Matters Incidental Thereto 2013', Senator Pius Ewherido (Delta Central), said if it passed into law would also punish any employee who serves as an 'accessory for manslaughter' by negligently performing or sabotaging their employers in any event which results in death.
While presenting the bill for second reading, Ewherido said provisions of the bill fell within the definition of killing in Section 308 of the criminal code.
Section 308 of Criminal Code states: "Except as hereinafter set forth, any person who causes the death of another directly or indirectly by any means whatever is deemed to have killed another person."
Ewherido said he drew his inspiration for the bill from unconfirmed reports that the management of Dana Airline ordered the aircraft, MD 83, which crashed in Lagos on June 3, 2012, to fly despite the insistence of the company’s technical crew that the aircraft was not airworthy at the time.
According to him, the bill also set out to fill the lacuna created by restrictive definitions. Ewherido said: "But the situation today is radically different from what it used to be when the criminal code was enacted. The industrialisation of the society with attendant increase in economic activities as well as the population explosion with resultant high human mobility have given rise to new sets of behaviour and challenges.
