The need for effective collaboration by critical stakeholders, constitutional amendments in giving effect to the nation’s Administration of Criminal Justice Act/Law was the consensus of critical stakeholders in the justice sector, writes Alex Enumah.
Immediate past President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, is famous with the statement, “if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill us”.
The harm corruption does to any country or society, is best imagined, hence successive government put in place machineries to reduce or completely tackle corruption, besides the country’s laws.
The slow pace of justice delivery in Nigeria, especially occasioned by cases involving the wealthy and politically exposed persons necessitated the enactment of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) in 2015. Since then all states in the federation have domesticated the law to enhance justice delivery in their respective states.
Among the great innovations introduced by the Act is Section 396(7) which donates power to an elevated Judge to return to the former court in which he presided to continue and deliver judgment on part-heard criminal matters. The intent was to prevent a situation where a matter that has been heard by Judge A, for say three years from starting afresh by Judge B, because Judge A has been elevated to a higher court. Unfortunately, as laudable as the section was, it was recently struck down by the Supreme Court in the Ude Jones v FRN case for being at variance with the Constitution of the country, hence, was declared unconstitutional, illegal, null and void.
The decision of the Supreme Court left many criminal justice actors and stakeholders bewildered and at a loss as to how to achieve the speedy trial objectives of the ACJA/L since the hallmark provision guaranteeing same had just been struck down by the Court.
Burdened by the setback occasioned by the position of the apex court and other factors clogging Nigeria’s wheel of justice, the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Nigeria with funding from MacArthur Foundation, recently embarked on a Nation-wide campaign to ensure the gains of the ACJA/L are not lost on the nation.
The organisation held series of debate workshops in five states of the Federation which include Anambra, Bayelsa, Ekiti, Kano, Rivers snd FCT. In these states, FIDA Nigeria interacted with criminal justice actors and stakeholders such as the Police and other Law Enforcement Agencies, Judiciary, Ministry of Justice, Legal Aid Council, Human Rights, Correctional Service, Nigerian Bar Associatio, CSOs and the media, among others.
Through these workshops, FIDA Nigeria has been able to garner inputs and harness the efforts of criminal justice actors in resolving this impasse by debating on the implications of the unconstitutionality of Section 396(7) will have on litigants in respect of speedy trials especially relating to corruption cases across various courts.
The debate workshops focused on a collection of discussions ranging from the opinion of stakeholders as it relates to the Supreme Court Judgement in the Orji Kalu’s case, the challenges in implementing speedy trial provisions, recommendations that would enhance implementing these provisions and many more.
Some of the challenges identified to impugn on the speedy trial of cases include;
a) Congestion of Court Dockets leading to general inefficiency of the Judiciary and the inability of the Judges and Magistrates to conclude any case within a reasonable timeframe.
b) Inadequate number of Judges and Magistrates to deal with the high case load and the high volume of emerging cases.
c) Unfamiliarity and inexperience with the entire context and gamut of corruption trials by some members of the Judiciary, Ministry of Justice, Police and other Law Enforcement Agencies, NBA etc; thus making them slightly incapable to handle those trials very effectively.
d) Sparse tools for research, training and personal development readily available to the Judges, Magistrates, and Prosecutors, etc.
e) Frequent transfer and elevation of Judges and Magistrates rendering them largely unable to conclude part-heard criminal cases after such transfer or elevation.
f) Heavy reliance on manual recording of court proceedings by Judges and Magistrates thus slowing down the pace of trial.
g) Frequent court adjournments at the instance of the Court, Prosecution, Defence and Correctional Service.
h) Insufficient welfare packages and general incentives that serve as workplace motivation for the Judges, Magistrates, Prosecutors, Corrections officers and criminal justice stakeholders at large.
i) Infrastructural and technological deficits at the Courts, Correctional Service, Police/LEA’s and other criminal justice institutions.
j) Underdeveloped witness support and protection scheme in Nigeria which makes it difficult to secure the attendance of witnesses in court and their protection during and after the trial.
k) Inadequate preparation for trials by Prosecutors and Defence Counsel.
l) Poor synergy and lack of co-operation by criminal justice stakeholders especially amongst the Police/LEA’s.
m) Lack of necessary political and institutional will to drive speedy trial reforms.
n) Frequent political and administrative interference that impugn on the smooth investigation and trial of cases.
o) Lack of comprehensive criminal justice database that can help the courts and LEA’s to properly track the criminal records of defendants and suspects.
p) Inadequate number prosecutors to diligently prosecute the high number of cases.
q) Heavy reliance on trial-within-trial by prosecutors and defence counsel which lengthens the overall duration of the trial.
r) Poor bail regime which makes it easy for defendants to jump bail thereby stalling the trial in some cases.
Based on the above, the following recommendations were made by the stakeholders on how to best achieve the intent and spirit of section 396(7) and promote speedy trial of cases in Nigeria;
a) The heads of court and other relevant institutions should advocate for the appointment of more Judges, Magistrates and recruitment of more Prosecutors to reduce the overall number of cases each handles.
b) The heads of court should ensure the creation of a specialized criminal court division to handle corruption cases.
c) All criminal justice stakeholders should seek to actively implement other extant speedy trial provisions of the ACJA/L.
Such provisions include the elimination of the stay of proceedings in criminal trials, day-to-day trials, limited number of adjournments at the instance of parties, limitation to the duration of adjournments, award of costs, trial in absentia etc. This would also ensure the efficient and speedy dispensation of cases and lead to decongestion of court dockets.
d) The government should prioritize upgrading existing infrastructure and building new ones to meet the infrastructural demands of the criminal justice system.
e) The ACJMC, NLRC, CSOs and other relevant organisations should ensure frequent training, retraining and capacity building exercises for members of the Judiciary, DPP, and LEAs etc.
f) The heads of institutions should make provision of training and research tools for the personal development of Judges, Magistrates, Court Support Staff, Prosecutors, and Investigators, etc.
g) The head of court should create of a timeframe (six months preferred) from the time a Judge is nominated for elevation to the time the Judge is sworn-in to assume that new office. This timeframe would give the Judge the ability to focus and conclude on all part-heard criminal cases. It is also recommended that no new case should be assigned to the Judge within this (six months) timeframe.
h) The courts should be fitted with electronic video/audio recording devices and other supporting technology like text-to-speech devices in order to aid in recording of the trial. This would greatly aid the court to do away with manual recording of trial proceedings which greatly slows down the pace of trial.
i) The Judges and Magistrates should insist on implementing the use of case management hearings before the commencement of trial so that the case can be properly structured and planned and all parties would be fully aware of how the case is to progress so that they can be ready on every day set-down for the case.
j) The Judges and Magistrates should ensure the use of sanctions like fines to discourage frivolous and unscrupulous applications.
k) The government and heads of institutions should ensure the improvement of welfare packages and incentives to motivate the Judges, Magistrates, Prosecutors, Corrections officers and criminal justice stakeholders.
l) Developed witness support and protection scheme to give a robust legal and institutional basis for funding witness expenses and for protecting witness.
This would greatly encourage witnesses to co-operate and give evidence in court as and when required.
m) Improved synergy and better co-operation among criminal justice stakeholders.
n) The Nigerian Police Force should endeavour to strive towards the creation of a robust database that warehouses the records of suspects and defendants. Preferably the Central Criminal Records Registry which is meant to be established pursuant to section 16 of the ACJA 2015.
o) Use of improved investigative practices by Police and LEAs to assuage the need for trial within trial. The use of an audio-visual recording device as stipulated by the ACJA is recommended.
p) Implementation of Innovative and robust bail regime to accommodate electronic tagging, corporate/professional bondspersons, etc.
q) Judicial activism by Judges in encouraging speedy trial of cases in their courts by ensuring strict adherence to the statutory timelines contained in the ACJA 2015.
r) Effective monitoring of corruption cases by all stakeholders to encourage accountability from all the parties involved (Judge, Counsel, Correctional Service, Litigants etc.)
The Heads of Court, National Judicial Council and the Media must take lead roles in this regard.
s) Use of Court Judgment, Rules of Court or NJC guidelines mandating Judges to continue part-heard criminal cases as there is no legislative enactment mandating trial de novo in Nigeria. (This should be implemented as a matter of priority).
t) Constitutional amendment to reflect the input the provision of section 396(7) of the ACJA so as to reflect the intent of the lawmakers in the said section.
FIDA Nigeria, however, concluded that for the goals and objectives of the ACJA/ L to be realized, “All stakeholders must contribute their respective quotas to ensuring that its object is speedily actualized, and the work FIDA Nigeria has done in identifying the challenges and putting together recommendations from a wide range of stakeholders is a great first step in this direction. All stakeholders are thus needed to identify their various roles and responsibilities and commence active implementation”.
