RIGHT TO PRIVATE AND FAMILY LIFE: Right To Privacy Of Your Dwelling Place
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RIGHT TO PRIVATE AND FAMILY LIFE
– Section 37
“The privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications is hereby guaranteed and protected.”The Constitution guarantees that every citizen of Nigeria is entitled to their privacy. This right to privacy covers your home, correspondences, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications; hence your privacy as a citizen in Nigeria is protected by the Constitution. So, you are entitled not to be bothered or disturbed by anybody or persons whatsoever, so long as you are not involved in any illegality.
a. Right To Privacy Of Your Dwelling Place
The provision not only guarantees but protects your privacy. In this sense, it is illegal for another person to invade your home or enter into your dwelling place without your consent and authority. It is illegal for a person to enter into your apartment without your knowledge and consent, even if he is your landlord or the owner of the property. So, if anybody enters into your home without your consent, that person has committed trespassed against your property. Aside from the remedy under the Constitution, you may also sue the person and claim damages for the trespass notwithstanding that no damage was caused to your property.This constitutional guarantee of your privacy is also protected under the criminal laws. For instance, under the Criminal Code, Sections 410 – 417 deal with offences which relate to invasion of the privacy of your home, viz, housebreaking, burglary, breaking and entry, etc. Section 410 defines the offences as follows:
“A person who breaks any part, whether external or internal, of a building, or opens by unlocking, pulling, pushing, lifting, or any other means whatever, any door, window, shutter, cellar flap, or other thing, intended to close or cover an opening in a building, or an opening giving passage from one part of a building to another, is said to break the building.
A person is said to enter a building as soon as any part of his body or any part of any instrument used by him is within the building.
A person who obtains entrance into a building by means of any threat or artifice used for that purpose, or by collusion with any person in the building, or who enters any chimney or other aperture of the building permanently left open for any necessary purpose, but not intended to be ordinarily used as a means of entrance, is deemed to have broken and entered the building.”
All these constitute offences under the Criminal Code for which the punishments range from 7 years to life imprisonment.
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