Alex Enumah in Abuja
The National Judicial Council (NJC) in Abuja yesterday unveiled the online real time verification platform for retired federal judicial and some non-judicial officers on its payroll, as well as the online enrollment for retiring federal judiciary staff.
The Executive Secretary NJC, Ahmed Gambo Saleh, in an address at the official launch of the project, said the launch was a testimony to the fact that his dream for information technology-driven judiciary “is surely becoming a reality.”
Represented by the NJC’s Director of Information, Mr. Soji Oye, the executive secretary disclosed that the pension department of the NJC is not left out in his initiative as most of the processes and operations have been automated.
The NJC boss said the apex judicial body had in the past few years championed a complete technological transformation of the court systems and processes, placing more premium on audio-visual court sittings and e-filing of processes.
Earlier, the Director of Pensions, NJC, Mrs. Georginia Obingene, said the initiative was aimed at improving the operational efficiency of the pensions department of the council.
“The NJC is the first among all other key players in the administration of pension in Nigeria to implement a robust e-platform of this nature which is aimed at reducing to the barest minimum, the challenges and difficulties faced by retirees during the traditional pension verification exercise,” Obingene said.
She hinted that the NJC conducts annual verification exercise for these categories of officers who are spread across all the states of the federation, including the FCT, so as to revalidate their biometric data and ensure integrity and reliability of the pension records.
With the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the director said the NJC was faced with no other option than to leverage on information technology to accomplish these tasks, and to also key into the recent automation initiatives of the NJC.
“It is for this very reason we are gathered here today to witness the launching of this project, and to mark the official take-off of the online real time verification platform for retired federal judicial and some non-judicial officers on our payroll, and the online enrolment for retiring federal judiciary staff,” she said.
