The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Wednesday,
decried what he described as the “terribly slow pace” of justice
administration in the Nigerian courts.
Buhari, who recalled how
it took so long for the courts to decide and eventually dismiss the
election petitions he filed to challenge his losses in the 2003, 2007,
and 2011 presidential polls, declared that the Nigerian justice system
needed an urgent reform.
He suggested that the judiciary should put a
12-month time limit on the hearing of criminal cases from the high
court to the Supreme Court, while all civil cases should be concluded
within 15 months.
Buhari spoke at the 60th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, with the theme, “Stepping Forward.”
His speech was read at the virtual conference by the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN).
Speaking
about his experience, Buhari said, “At the end, I lost all three cases.
I wondered then, why it needed to take so long to arrive at a verdict
and if I had won the case, someone who did not legitimately win the
election would have been in office all that time.
In 2019, I was
no longer petitioner; I had now become a respondent in the case of Atiku
and Buhari and the whole process took barely six months; just over six
months. What was the difference? The law had changed since my own in
2003, 2007 and 2011. You had now introduced time limits for election
petitions. Everything must be done within a six to eight-month period.
My question then is why can’t we have a time limit for criminal cases?
Why can’t we have a rule that will say a criminal trial all the way to
the Supreme Court must not exceed 12 months? And why can’t we do the
same for civil cases? Even if we say that civil cases must not go beyond
between 12 and 15 months. I think that for me is stepping forward.”
The
president equally lamented the churning out of multiple and conflicting
court orders by judges, noting that in the recent leadership crisis
that rocked the ruling All Progressives Congress, no fewer than eight
conflicting court orders were made by different judges in a space of six
weeks.
Buhari also proposed a reform of the process of judges’ appointment, recommending that aspiring judges should take tests.
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