WHAT is beyond remedy' One may ask. Human lives are beyond means of enforcing a right or preventing or redressing a wrong; legal or equitable relief.Parke; B, in Robinson V. Harman is of the opinion that, 'the rule of the common law is that where a party sustains a loss by reason of a breach of contract, he is, so far as money can do it, to be placed in the same situation, with respect to damages, as if the contract had been reformed.'What is inferred from this legal principle is that, where an innocent person suffers a loss he must be granted an equitable relief by the appropriate authority.The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary sees remedy as 'a solution or way of dealing with or improving an unpleasant or difficult situation.'These definitions can be interpreted to mean compensation which a person or group of persons are entitled to receive from the guilty persons. The word 'innocent person as has been used in this context to mean a victim of violence of any description which may arise from inter-ethnic, and inter-religious conflicts, value-based conflict and political problems.Not that alone, there are victims of road accidents, fire accidents and flood. All these are accumulated into irreparable losses, which are beyond remedy because there is no equitable relief for a person whose parents have been killed by a lion. The words, 'guilty persons' refers to a body of people who have the authority to provide an adequate security for the citizens living in a country.This security is provided for in the section 11 (1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as follows:The National Assembly may make laws for the Federation or any part thereof with respect to the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order.The truth to the fact is that the law has cast the duty of providing security upon Nigerian government for human lives. That is why, right to life is provided for the section 33 in the chapter four of the 1999 Federal Republic of Nigeria Constitution as follows: 'Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life, save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he had been found guilty in Nigeria.This right is the first basic right of any individual. In order to have social control on one hand and to avoid jungle justice, on the other, constitution through which the government has derived all its authority and power has granted an individual the right to life. Of course, as soon as the occurrence of violence claims human lives, Nigerian government shows financial commitment to the victims. Yes, indeed, it is a responsibility of government to do so but the most important of all is the commitment on the part of government to secure Nigerians' lives. Prevention is better than cure, as they say. It needs to be understood by the government that no amount of remedy is equal in value with human's life. It cannot revive the lives of the youth corpers members who were killed by he bomb explosion in Suleja, Niger State on the eve of the general elections this year. What about many innocent Nigerians who were massacred during the post-general elections or what remedy can bring back the lives of many innocent citizens who were killed in the Jos crisis''Ha!' We can't see them anymore both men and women, the old and the young, who were bombed to death in some parts of Nigeria by the so-called Boko Haram sect.Death is at the threshold when considering a great number of people who were carried away by floods in different parts of our country.Thanks to God who in His mercies gave us life; thanks to those two foreign faiths, Christianity and Islam which proved in their holy books, Bible, and Quran, that life begins afterGod Almighty has breathed into man. More power also to the scientists' elbow who their research found that life begins at conception.Therefore, those who champion the cause of human killings should remember that they are wasting lives which they can not create.At the same time, those to whom power is delegated must really understand that, provision of security for our lives and properties is far better than a million compensations.For the purpose of this write-up, I need to borrow the words of that famous French philosopher of the 18th century, G.R. Elton, who said, 'No picture is exactly like original.'Therefore, it implies that life has no duplicate and so money cannot buy it.Even in law, damages, I think may be granted by a court for general or specific items but not for human killings.Hamzat is of the Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan.
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