Reduce burden on Supreme Court- Barr. Njoku tells CJN, NASS

By Jude Opara, Abuja

A Constitutional lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria,SAN, Chief Soronadi Njoku has urged the new Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN), Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun to liaise with the National Assembly to effect a Constitutional amendment to reduce the workload of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Barrister Njoku who was among the 87 newly inducted Senior Advocates of Nigeria while speaking at a civic reception in his honour in Abuja on Monday said it has become expedient for the country to help the apex court by reducing issues that usually terminate there, a development he believes will make the administration of justice.
He argued that it is abnormal that some cases that ought to have ended at the appeal usually find their way to the Supreme Court, a situation which forces litigations to last between seven to 10 years at the highest court of the land.
“Sincerely, the first thing that comes to my mind is that the CJN, Hon. Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun should work in tandem with the National Assembly especially to amend the Constitution of the Federal republic of Nigeria and reduce the amount of matters that make their way to the Supreme Court.
“Nigeria is the only country on planet earth that I know where a matter can originate from the Customary Court, through the Customary Court of Appeal or from the Magistrate Court through the High court of a state and to the Court of Appeal and up to the Supreme Court. It is such an irony that it is on record that in Nigeria we have up to 3,000 cases at the Supreme Court, the American Supreme Court does not handle up to 100 cases in a year.
“And that pressure is part of the notion of lack of transparency on the part of the Supreme Court. We must limit these matters, for instance, the Supreme Court should be the Supreme Court and not the court where you go to determine between A and B who is the village head of Nnamawa village in Umuowa, Ngor Okpala, but today that is part of what the Supreme Court does”.
According to Njoku, even some political related cases like the House of Asembly, House of Representatives and the Senate should terminate at the Court of Appeal.
He further advocated for the establishment of what he called a Constitutional Court that would be strictly saddled with election related cases; this in his views will take away some of the notions that the judiciary is usually focused more on politically related matters to the detriment of other cases.

“I was advocating at some point for the creation of a Constitutional Court in Nigeria; all the cases that give the judiciary black eyes are usually political matter.

“Create a parallel system of court, called the Constitutional Court so that these issues for instance of whether someone was elected or not, whether his tenure has expired or not and everything about the political system would now go in the first instance through the Constitutional Court apparatus.

“What happens every four years is that the judiciary comes to a halt simply because of election tribunals and by the time they finish with the tribunals, the Appeal Court will stop for the next six to nine months because they are handling appeals from the Tribunals, thereafter the Supreme Court will halt. An average life span of a case at the Supreme Court is between seven and 10 years, it should not be; and the only way out is to reduce the quantum of matters that go to them and then you now begin to talk of matters of substantial justice and so on”.

The learned silk equally said he believes that cases should not be arbitrarily decided based on technicalities without truly examining its substance.