By Vivian Okejeme, Abuja
Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Tuesday, advocated for practical solutions towards improved performance, enhanced accountability and independence of the Justice sector.
the Vice President said focus should be on four or five clearly outlined areas: namely the establishment of a solely merit-based judicial selection and promotion process; a new approach to Judicial budgeting and funding and the all-important question of judicial remuneration and welfare.
Osinbajo made this known at the Justice Sector Reform Summit 2022 held in Abuja, organized by the Nigerian Bar Association and some stakeholders in the Justice delivery sector.
According to him, it is quite frankly stunning that the process for evaluation and interview of judges, men and women statutorily empowered to literarily determine the lives and livelihoods of others is one of the least rigorous processes imaginable.
“In the United Kingdom from where we derive most of the structures of our judicature, applicants to judicial office in superior courts go through several screening processes, at some point, it was 17 stages, including written examinations, interviews and role-play exercises.
“They are subjected to rigorous background investigations covering professional credentials and abilities, public records, judicial pronouncements, and personal financial affairs; evaluation by the Bar Association on Integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament. And in the US, Supreme Court appointments involve rigorous public screening by the Senate, which sifts through the entire public, and sometimes private lives of candidates.
“That is the nature of the rigour that anyone who should hold the power of life and death, and power over other people’s livelihoods, should go through.
“It shouldn’t be a “take a bow” situation at all. It must be rigorous because the moment the person is appointed into a high office of that sort, they are unleashed as it were on the rest of us. The robustness and transparency of the processes in these jurisdictions according to Osinbajo, “provide comfort to the candidates of the fairness of the selection process and enables the public to have front-row seat in some of these processes.
More so, he stated effort must be made to equally ensure that the conditions under which they operate are not only befitting but are good enough to attract the best of minds in our profession.
“Judicial remuneration and welfare are critical. Why should a judge earn so much less than a federal legislator?
“There is no basis for it whatsoever. We should in fact benchmark without necessarily creating fresh new legislation because the Legislature doesn’t have any legislation about their own salaries” the VP said.
“We must strengthen the processes of reviewing performance, incentivising excellence, and penalising misconduct.
“There is also no question that the expeditious delivery of justice cannot wait any longer. The reputation of our system for repeatedly resulting in what the UK Court of Appeal described as “catastrophic delays” must be reversed” he said. “One Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria gave evidence in a court in England, that it would take between 30 – 40 years to conclude a case in Nigeria.
“Everyone knows that these delays take far too long, everyone who has practised in our courts knows that delay as a strategy is one of the weapons that our colleagues deploy repeatedly.
“It is the responsibility of the bar and the bench, but I must say, especially with respect to delays, a lot depends on what counsel will do. In criminal cases, a lot depends on when you are able to conclude investigations, witnesses, especially those on the side of the prosecution”.
Osinbajo posited that we cannot make a scapegoat of any arm of the administration of the justice system; stressing, “it is clear that we all have blame and responsibility here.
“We can do better. We have to do better. Our problems are ours, not for spirits, to solve. They are human problems and I am sure we can solve them. We must be intentional in our approach. “We must rediscover those attributes that made Nigeria’s judiciary a supplier of high calibre judicial personnel to other countries on the continent” Osinbajo submitted.
In his welcome address, the President of NBA, Olumide Akpata, noted that the declining state of the nation’s justice sector was the major reason for the convocation of the summit.
“Today, I believe that our call to action must begin from our admission of the state of affairs of our administration of justice that we are thoroughly dissatisfied with. There is a convergence of opinion of both the Bar and the Bench that the Nigerian justice delivery system is not operating at its optimal best,” he said.
