Can a domestic tribunal or an administrative disciplinary committee try a person for a criminal offence? The answer is clearly no. But can such a tribunal, in the exercise of its disciplinary powers, try a person for misconduct even though the acts amounting to such misconduct are in the nature of criminal offences? The Nigerian Supreme Court has given a negative answer to this latter question. The aim of this short article is to show that the answer puts “ill-legal” constraints on the administrative disciplinary powers of such tribunals.

The history of the problem dates back to 1968. In Denloye v. Medical and Dental Practitioners' Disciplinary Tribunal, counsel for the plaintiff raised the issue of the competence of a disciplinary tribunal to try a person for acts alleged to amount to infamous conduct in a professional respect where the acts were in the nature of criminal offences. Although the court did not consider the issue, it nevertheless observed (in the typical fashion of regarding English law as a palimpsest of Nigerian law) that the practice under the English Medical Act, 1956 which was that allegations of unprofessional conduct in the nature of offences were not dealt with under the Act in the first instance but were left to the courts, and, after conviction, disciplinary actions would follow, was the intention in Nigeria.