The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, recently bemoaned how the Supreme Court is grappling with 6,884 delayed cases.
There is a shortfall of justices in the Supreme Court, with only 13 left on the bench despite that the constitution provided 21, which has widened the gap in the ratio of judges to litigants in Nigeria.
According to the National Judicial Council (NJC), the judiciary’s regulatory body, only 1,179 judges are available for the courts across the country with an estimated population of 218 million people.
As a result, many cases drag in the courts with some files being called up for the first time after 10 years.
A staff of the Supreme Court confided in Daily Trust Saturday under the condition of anonymity that many appeals filed in 2006 were being heard for the first time this year.
He said recommendations of committees in the past for special courts to expeditiously handle some cases, like criminal and corruption cases, had not been implemented.
CJN speaks on backlog
Speaking at the investiture of 62 new Senior Advocates of Nigeria in Abuja on November 28, Justice Ariwoola said that out of the 6,884 cases at the apex court, there were 4,741 appeals in the court’s docket, with 1,495 of them having briefs filed and exchanged for hearing, leaving only 751 as moribund appeals.
The CJN said there were 3,246 remaining appeals having about 10,000 motions, with some being contentious and others innocuous in nature.
He added that within the window offered by the 2021/2022 legal year, the Supreme Court handled a total number of 1,764 cases, comprising of motions and appeals.
He commended the efforts of the Corruption and Financial Crime Cases Trial Monitoring Committee (COTRIMCO) under the leadership of retired Justice Suleiman Galadima, which has worked towards fast-tracking the trial of corruption and financial-related crimes in the country.
He said that between October 2021 and September 2022, a total number of 3,563 convictions were made through the collaborative effort of the committee, while there were equally a large number of forfeited cash and non-cash recoveries made within the period.
Besides, the shortfall in the number of justices compared to the number of cases, the CJN also bemoaned the “litigious” nature of Nigerians as accounting for the huge ratio of cases and judges.
“We don’t need to rush to court after every little disagreement. We have various alternative dispute resolution mechanisms across the country we can conveniently leverage on, with a view to freeing the courts of this incessant case overload. In every little disagreement, we rush to court, and in every lost case, we rush to appeal, even up to the Supreme Court, no matter how little the issue might be. That has obviously accounted for the several appeals pending in the Supreme Court,” he said.
Ariwoola noted that although the apex court receives scathing criticisms from members of the public over our over-blotted docket, the justices are “neither in any position to regulate case inflow to the court nor have the supernatural power to attend to all in one fell swoop.”
Judiciary challenges
Another reason for the congestion of the courts is that the few justices in the Nigerian judiciary mainly write in long hand during proceedings, which makes it difficult to accelerate proceedings.
To accelerate justice delivery, the NJC has begun an elaborate installation of an electronic court system through its technology-leveraged courts (TLCs), which are expected to eliminate papers with cases filed under the case management system, and lawyers can reach the court in real-time from anywhere.
This is besides the general condition of service of judicial officers, especially at the highest level. The Nigerian judiciary is also beset with other challenges, such as poor funding, political interference, corruption, delays due to inadequate manpower, technology, unwieldy structure, low quality of judicial officers due to flawed recruitment process, poor welfare for judges, absence of a fair and transparent system, political interference and lack of independence.
Analysts suggest that proof of the lack of independence of the judiciary is the poor funding as provided in the low share of the judiciary in the country’s overall budget, which is a threat to rule of law, democracy and development.
Although the judiciary budget has been on the increase in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, there has been a decline in the percentage of the total budgetary figures to less than 1 per cent.
For instance, the budgetary allocations to the judiciary have been declining in percentage share of the nation’s budget. One of this is the N70 billion budgeted for the judiciary in 2016 out of the N6.08 trillion total proposals, which is 1.1 per cent.
Also, the 2023 budget proposes a sum of N150 billion out of the N20.51 trillion, which is a 0.74 per cent.
In the 2022 budget, out of the N17.126 trillion overall budget, the judiciary got N120 billion, which is 0.7 9 per cent.
Many recruitment exercises of judges in the country have been challenged in courts on allegations of nepotism, political interference and non-compliance with the NJC Guidelines and Procedural Rules.
In the last exercise for the FCT High Court in May 2020, the Open Bar Initiative led by Prof Chidi Odinkalu accused the NJC of appointing certain persons based on “connection” and “family affiliation”.
Reacting, Dr Chudi Chukwuani, a contractor, who has battled for many years in the courts to recover his funds for work done, said the heavy caseload on judges is killing quick justice delivery, especially in the FCT.
“If the entire cases filed in court is one per cent of the country’s population of over 200 million, that comes to two million cases filed nationwide every year. Now, what percentage do you think would come to the federal capital?
“You find out that most people believe that they won’t get justice in their respective states, so most of the disputes, especially the political ones, everybody brings his to FCT High Court. So, the FCT High Court is now inundated with so many cases because of the peculiarities, population, growth and economic development of our society.
“Some of the judges are handling about 1,000 cases. How can a judge be handling 1,000 cases? What do you want him to do, kill himself? The consequence is that the judges would not give justice because they won’t have time to analyse cases.
“We need more courts and judges in the FCT to at least 250 judges because the population is exploding.”
DailyTrust
