Wale Igbintade
The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Judiciary, Hon Onofiok Luke, yesterday, lamented that Nigeria’s Justice Sector as presently constituted was bedevilled by poor funding and needed N200 billion special intervention fund to meet its competing demands and challenges.
Luke made the call while on oversight visit, with some of his Committee members, to federal judicial establishments in Lagos.
The team, who visited the Court of Appeal, Federal High Court and the National Industrial Court in the Ikoyi area of the state, stated that the government must provide better living and working conditions for judicial officers in the court.
While addressing Journalists at the end of the visit, Luke said the 2021 budget proposal from the National Judicial Council (NJC) for the judiciary was about N180 billion but what they only got was about N120 billion, which was a far cry from the needed funding.
He, therefore, insisted that the judiciary needed an intervention fund if the country wanted to properly fund the third arm of government.
“If we can have an intervention fund for the entertainment industry or if the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) can have an intervention fund for the Agric sector, there is need for a special intervention fund for the judiciary in the sum of N100 billion or N200 billion. This would take care of infrastructure, the welfare, emoluments and salaries of judicial workers.
“The last time there was a review of the salaries of the judicial workers in Nigeria was about 13 years ago. If we are asking them not to be corrupt, though I am not saying poverty is an excuse to be corrupt, they must be well taken care of because we are all buying from the same market.
“With what we have seen on the ground in Lagos, we are committed to improving the administration of justice in Nigeria, the House under the Honorable Speak, Femi Gbajabiamila, is also committed to judicial reforms.
“So, it is our goal to create an enabling environment for the judiciary to operate. At the Court of Appeal, we saw what was done there. The new retrofitted courtroom did by the NJC and we are going to recommend that this should be done across the country. We are going to look at the budget and recommended that more retrofitted courtrooms should be done,” Luke said.
Speaking, the Chief Registrar of the Federal High Court, Emmanuel Gakko, revealed that the new court complex under construction would be completed by March 2022.
According to him, the building which started in 2011 was about 81 per cent completed and that the contractors had promised to deliver the project unfailingly by the first quarter of next year.
Gakko, however, thank the federal government, the National Assembly and the NJC for the support they gave to the project, which he maintained would improve the productivity of the judges and other support staff.
Deputy Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal, Hassan Suleiman, also called on the lawmakers to intervene and prevent the revocation of the residence of the President of the Court in Lagos.
Suleiman alleged that some people were interested in taking over the property, which was allocated to the court in 1978 by the federal government.
He also called for more funding to enable the appellate court to renovate the court building, which was damaged during the aftermath of the #ENDSARS protest.
