On 11 November 1762, the King’s messengers; James Watson, Thomas Ardran, and Robert Blackmore led by Nathan Carrington, while acting on the instructions and orders of Lord Halifax, the secretary of state to the king broke into the home of Sir John Entick, a famous writer, who constantly write and publish seditious and defamatory things about the government.

The messengers broke into his home with “force and arms” and spent over four hours ransacking through his properties and searched all the rooms and destroyed some of his personal belongings in the process and then took away 100 charts and 100 pamphlets.

John Entickson sued the king’s messenger for trespass claiming £2000 in damages. In the king’s messengers’ defence, they claimed that they were duly sent by the government through the written warrant issued to them by the secretary of state to go and conduct a search in the plaintiff’s house, hence why they cannot be held liable for trespass.

The court held in the favour of the claimant holding that the secretary of state, Lord Halifax had no statutory rights to issue warrants of search, therefore, the warrant purportedly issued to the defendants was invalid and their action of breaking into the claimant’s house amounted to trespass.

The matter was presided over by Lord Camden, the Chief Justice of the common plea, while in his obiter the Lord justice made the famous pronouncement which has come to found the grounds and the rule of law as relating to trespass in the English common law, he stated inter alia, thus;

“The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property. That right is preserved, sacred and incommunicable in all instances, where it has not been taken away or abridged by some public law for the good of the whole. The cases where this right of property is set aside by private law, are various. Distresses, executions, forfeitures, taxes etc are all of this description; wherein every man by common consent gives up that right, for the sake of justice and the general good. By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set his foot upon my ground without my licence, but he is liable to an action, though the damage be nothing; which is proved by every declaration in trespass, where the defendant is called upon to answer for bruising the grass and even treading upon the soil. If he admits the fact, he is bound to show by way of justification that some positive law has empowered or excused him. The justification is submitted by the judges, who are to look into the books; and if such a justification can be maintained by the text of the statute law, or by the principles of common law. If no excuse can be found or produced, the silence of the books is an authority against the defendant, and the plaintiff must have judgment”

The above obiter by Lord Camden also later became viewed as a general principle of restrictions of the powers of the government, hence; “the state may do nothing but that which is expressly authorised by law” this implies that the government must have the legal authority to interfere with the rights of an individual and cannot simply assert state necessity as a justification.

As a rule, established by the above case, if a defendant enters a claimant’s property without being invited by the owner of the property or lawful excuse or legal warrant, that defendant has committed a trespass against the claimant which is actionable in tort; it does not matter if the defendant is a law enforcement agent acting in the authority of the government, once it is established that the person in question has entered a property without a lawful excuse or a legal warrant, trespass has taken place.

Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, has called the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) out for disobeying the ex parte order issued by the Supreme Court last week, restraining it from enforcing the February 10 deadline earlier set to phase out old N200, N500 and N1,000 notes, following their redesign.

The central bank had on Tuesday announced that the old notes have ceased to be legal tender despite the Supreme Court’s order, prompting questions about the application of rule of law in Nigeria.

The CBN governor Godwin Emefiele said on Tuesday there is no need to shift the deadline because the over-the-counter payment adjustment made early this month is mitigating the scarcity that has characterized the naira swap policy.

“The situation is substantially calming down since the commencement of over-the-counter payments to complement ATM disbursements and the use of super-agents.

“There is, therefore, no need to consider any shift from the deadline of February 10,” Emefiele said during a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss the monetary and currency redesign policy.

Emefiele said this despite the assurance of the Attorney General of Federation (AGF) Abubakar Malami that the federal government will obey the ex parte order in respect for the rule of law.

In his response to the CBN decision to disobey the Supreme Court’s order, Falana scolded the apex bank, saying things like that only happen in banana republic. He said that during a live interview on Channels TV’s ‘The 2023 Verdict’ on Tuesday, adding that the central bank wouldn’t disobey the Supreme Court where rule of law exists.

“In a country where the rule of law operates, once the Supreme Court has determined a matter or given an order, it is expected that all and sundry – everybody – will comply with the order.

“[A] statement was credited to the Central Bank that since it was not a party to the case, it’s not going to comply with the order. I thought that could only happen in a banana republic.

“I expected the Central Bank to have issued a statement following the order of the Supreme Court: ‘all actions are stale until the 15th of February,” he said.

The federal government is notorious of flouting court orders, setting a precedent believed to have emboldened others.

Falana said that the law needs to be invoked to deal with those who are deliberately flouting the orders of the court and sabotaging the rule of law in Nigeria.

“For me, an example has to be made this time around, so that nobody will feel that he’s above the law in our country,” he said.

Recently, Nigerian courts have committed several prominent persons heading big institutions in the country, including the Inspector General of Police and the head of the anti-graft agency EFCC, to prison for contempt of court. Though their committal was later set aside, the development signals a shift from the culture of impunity that has ridiculed rule of law in Nigeria for years.