Competency of a Witness: The Common and Islamic Law Perspectives
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Date
2010
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Published in Confluence Journal of Jurisprudence and International Law. A Publication of the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law Faculty of Law, Kogi State University, Anyigba Vol. 3 No. 2, 2010, pp. 68-76.
Abstract
Witness is a very important personality in any legal proceedings due to thefact that it is upon the evidence or testimony of such witness that the just decisionof the case rests. Administrations of justice rests solely on the weighing ofevidences adduced by the various witnesses before the court and as such,litigantsor parties are to ensure that they produce witnesses whose evidence will befavourable to their respective causes.
However, the laws have regulated the mode of adducing evidence or way of calling witnesses in Court, As such; we have the concept of competency of witness. Generally, by the provision of section 155 of the evidence Act,
All persons shall be competent to testify, unless the court consider that they are prevented from understanding the questions put to them, or from giving material answers to those questions by reason of tender years, extreme old age, disease whether of the body or mind or any other cause of the same kind