National Assembly should reject proposed immunity for judges — Adegboruwa

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, while fielding questions about immunity for justices and judges has stated that it is not necessary and should not be considered.

He stated that “there is no need for that. Nigerians are presently crying for the removal of immunity for the governors and the President. The agitation now is that nobody should be above the law. You see what is going on in Nigeria now; nobody should put themselves in such a position to do and undo.

“I do not support that judges should have any immunity. There is already a kind of immunity for those judges, in the sense that anything they do while sitting in court, in the cause of delivering judgment, they are not liable. It is already in our law. But to now grant absolute immunity to them, it cannot work in our system. They should not even dream of that at all. What we are crying for now is that the existing immunity should be reviewed, how much less extending it to judicial officers. There is no need for that at all,” he said.

The renowned legal practitioner stated further that the proposal to limit the time for prosecution of criminal cases is a revelation of the failure of the administration of justice, adding that “the current Administration of Criminal Justice Act that was passed by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 contains a provision that criminal cases should be heard from day to day. The reason why it is not working is because there is no (adequate) funding for the Judiciary. If you have judges to hear cases from day to day, it means that there is provision for such hearings: there are enough judges. And the cases that the judges are handling apart from the criminal cases swallow up the provisions in the Criminal Procedure Act. So, even if you make a law and say that criminal cases should be heard within certain number of years, you are only going to create crisis because unless you fund the judiciary, as long as judges are writing long hands…in Lagos for instance, a judge is handling about 700 cases and he has about 70 cases in one day to handle…how do you tell such a judge to conclude any case within six months when the number of judges is smaller than the number of cases available?

“The reality is that what is needed in the judiciary is an urgent reform in terms of funding. Appoint more judges, provide infrastructure – let there be electricity, electronic recording and facilities that will make the hearing of cases go day-to-day. In that case, you don’t even need time for any specific case; all cases will move naturally. When you have taken care of the salaries of judges and the infrastructure…in some of the courts in Lagos, there is nowhere to sit, litigants stay outside. I don’t think that the National Assembly is getting the proper diagnosis of the reason why there is delay in the hearing of cases.

“ If you leave criminal cases, what happens to commercial litigations which are supposed to run the economy? I don’t think that is proper; there is no need to isolate any case for special hearing. Address the problems of the Judiciary holistically and when that is done, cases should move from time to time. The politicians isolated their own pre-election cases to be heard within 180 days. That has destroyed the Judiciary effectively because what has happened now is that other cases are gathering dust, whereas any political matter is moved quickly. Lawyers have abandoned landlords and tenants, husbands and wives, land disputes, commercial problems. So, the judiciary is almost collapsing because of that selfish legislation which they passed under the 8th National Assembly. There is no need to compound that problem. Let the government address the real issues facing the judiciary,” he said.

(Story adapted from The PUNCH)