The Chief Justice of
Nigeria, Justice Mariam Mukhtar, has identified
the reasons for undue delays in the criminal justice administration system in
the country to the security agencies who take the suspects to court before
looking for evidence to prosecute them.
The CJN made this
statement at a special session organised
by the Supreme Court to mark the commencement of the 2013/2014 Legal Year, as
well as the inauguration of 17 new Senior Advocates of Nigeria in Abuja on
Monday.
She frowned at the
“unwholesome practice of some security agents involved in the criminal justice
administration system,” particularly the arraignment of suspects without first
gathering evidence for prosecution.
“It is common knowledge
that our security agencies usually rush to the courts with suspects, before
looking for evidence to prosecute them.
“The persistent use of
the ‘Holden Charge’ by these agencies to detain awaiting trial suspects, is a
major contributor to the high number of cases pending in our courts,” she said.
Justice Mukhtar said,
“This procedure is a far cry from what obtains in other democracies, where
discrete surveillance is placed on crime suspects who are painstakingly stalked
by security agents, until such a time when enough evidence would have been
obtained for their arrest, arraignment and prosecution.
“But in Nigeria,
suspects are promptly arrested and often times arraigned
in court, even when no
evidence for prosecution has been gathered.
“The backlash from such
failure of proper investigation by our security agencies is the resultant hike
in the number of cases pending in the courts.”
Justice Mukhtar warned
that “an extreme consequence of these glaring lapses may lie in the loss of
confidence in our domestic justice administration system which rubbishes our
often brandished favourable investment climate and translate to a huge
disincentive to potential foreign investors in Nigeria.”
She restated her call
for an overhaul of the country’s criminal laws, which she described as “archaic
and culturally irrelevant.”
The CJN further
expressed concerns at the slow pace of administration of justice in the
country.
“To exhaust complete
remedy in a case, that is from trial court to Supreme Court, could take up
to 20 years with the original litigants dead and substituted and in some cases
the substitutes also dead and substituted,” she said.
She added that the
process of interlocutory appeals aggravates the situation to the extent that by
the time the Supreme Court decides that they be continued in trial court, most
of the witnesses might have died or alive but senile, with documents no longer
traceable.
She stressed that, for
her to achieve the objective, “certain indices have to be guaranteed, for
instance government must at all times ensure total compliance with the rule of
law as well as adherence to the principle of separation of powers.”
Noting that, under a
democratic dispensation, the three arms of government must keep faith with the
doctrine of separation of powers as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, she
stressed that “the Judiciary must continue to defend its independence so that
it should not merely be apparent but must be seen to be real.”
“By virtue of Section
153 of the Constitution, the National Judicial Council is the apex body for the
nation’s Judiciary.
“By paragraph 21(1),
part 1 of the Third Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, the Council has the
power to deal with matters relating to broad issues of policy and
administration of the Judiciary,” she added.
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