Some Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and other justice sector stakeholders have urged the incoming Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, to make the sanitisation of the Judiciary a top priority.
The senior lawyers made the call yesterday in Abuja at a roundtable discussion on how to address key issues undermining the Judiciary’s institutional integrity, effectiveness and service delivery.
The event was organised by the Tap iNitaitive For Citizens Development and the Network of University Legal Aid Institutions (NULAI), Nigeria.
A former Deputy Director of the Nigerian Law School, Prof. Ernest Ojukwu (SAN), Prof. Samuel Erugo (SAN), and other senior lawyers, who made the call, stated that the Judiciary currently suffers from low public confidence.
They said this anomaly requires urgent attention to restore integrity to the system.
The speakers encouraged Justice Kekere-Ekun to reform the judicial appointment process to eradicate nepotism and favouritism, which they claimed has been rampant.
They also touched on the need for the incoming CJN to address challenges relating to abuse of ex-parte orders, conflicting judgments by courts of coordinate jurisdiction and related problems.
Ojukwu, Erugo and the others stressed the need to reform the process of dealing with election petitions and political cases and work on how to enhance discipline and accountability in the system.
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Ojukwu admonished the incoming CJN to always be guided by the principles of equity, fairness, and justice.
He called for a process that would reduce the influence of the Judiciary in the resolution of election disputes so that political leaders would be the true choices of the electorate, and not the court.
Erugo asked that the Supreme Court should be reformed in a way that it can review its own judgments, especially when there is a public outcry.
The Executive Director of Tap Initiative, Martin Obono, however, noted that the National Judicial Council (NJC), which supervises the appointment of judicial officers, attracted public criticism recently over allegations that the outgoing CJN, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, influenced the appointment of some family members.
Obono averred that the NJC ignored its guidelines in recent appointments, adding: “There have been reports of insider subversion of the applicable rules governing judicial appointments, such as the reported appointment, in one instance, of a candidate who scored zero in the NJC interview.”
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