by Section 321 of Criminal Procedure Code which enables the public prosecutor or the assistant public prosecutor to withdraw from the prosecution of any person either generally or in respect of any one or more of the offences for which he is tried. For doing so, consent of the court is necessary. Nigeria An attorney-general is the chief law officer both of the Federation of Nigeria and of each Nigerian state, and is also a government minister there. Under the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, the federal attorney-general has powers to institute or to take over and continue any criminal proceedings, and to discontinue them at any stage before a final judgement is delivered. The last power gives statutory authority to the practice of nolle prosequi, which has existed in Nigeria since the colonial era. It is not necessary for the attorney-general to ask for the consent of the court hearing the case, as was confirmed by the Federal Appeal Court in 1981. During the Second Nigerian Republic of 1979–1983, the state attorneys-general also had the power to issue a nolle prosequi, and abused this power in a few notorious cases, but this power is now only available to the federal attorney-general. Ghana The Attorney-General of Ghana has statutory power to issue a nolle prosequi under the Ghanaian Criminal Procedure Code of 1960, which acts to discontinue any criminal proceedings before a final judgement is made. A nolle prosequi was issued in several cases in 2001, when criminal libel cases brought against several journalists by one political party when in power were discontinued after a change of government. A number of cases have been brought on whether there are any restrictions on the attorney-general's discretion when issuing a nolle prosequi. These have concluded that nolle prosequi terminates a case in favour of the accused, without preventing new proceedings being issued later, and that the attorney general is answerable neither to the court in which the case was discontinued nor to any appellate court. However, these cases predate the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, which gives the Supreme Court oversight of any discretionary power vested in any person, although no case has been brought against any Attorney-General of Ghana for failure to use his discretion fairly, despite claims of political bias in the use of nolle prosequi. South Africa In South Africa, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is responsible for bringing criminal prosecutions