Story by Dili Utomi.
The judiciary, a critical arm of any government anywhere is usually saddled with the great responsibility of administering justice in order that a society may exist in an atmosphere of happiness and peace. A just society is socially stable, economically vibrant and politically sound and of course the absence of justice in any society portends the exact opposite of these ideals.
Reflecting on the issue of the judiciary as the body that administers justice is a businessman who is also a social commentator, one who is worried that our justice system does not play its role well enough, he is Mr. Kelvin Okechukwu.
We caught up with him and he fielded a few questions.
Mr. Okechukwu started pointedly by saying that “The judiciary is a fundamental part of any government because of its vital role in the administration of justice and you know that where there is no justice, there will be no peace. We have a lot to do in the case of the judiciary and justice delivery, the justice system is not working at all. We have a lot of criminals in public service, businesses, politics and all over who should be in prisons walking freely around because of the inadequacies within the system”.
He continued “When you consider our prisons, we have about eighty thousand prisoners, about thirty thousand are convicted criminals while the rest are awaiting trial, there is no place in the world that you have that much imbalance. In Nigeria, once you have money to get a bail, you are free, rather than the government spending money on prosecuting a case, the person seeking justice does all that and the criminals within the society understand this and take advantage of the lacuna within the the system”.
Mr. Okechukwu advocates that the government should live up to the responsibility of making sure that the judiciary is properly reformed. He said that Nigeria does not have the adequate number of magistrates and judges per capita. He noted that “The workload on the judges are overwhelming, each have workloads that can last ten years and this has presented a case where most of the cases are settled at the Police Stations level. If somebody rapes your daughter, he asks for settlement and may have some money paid to the victim and then leaves the Police Station and walks free”.
His words, Our judiciary is not well funded, not well equipped, not well supervised and is short in the area of the the number of qualified judicial officers to handle cases”.
On the matter of why governments have not been implementing recommended judicial reforms, Mr. Okechukwu said that he does not know why, but that there has not been any meaningful reforms. He noted that Nigeria officially has eighty thousand prisoners while Brasil with about the same population has about eight hundred thousand prisoners and that this is not a true reflection of the number of criminals in the country and statistics do not lie.
“We all run to the United States, a country that is stable because most of her criminals are in prison, they have about two million prisoners because their judiciary is working. In Nigeria, two thousand of the convicted criminals are on death row without execution, but if they have been executed, we will have fewer prisoners. The proper execution of the criminal justice system in Nigeria is non-existent and it is a major reason for the instability within the country. I have said it on several occasions, we seem to be recycling prisoners, people act with impunity because the criminal justice system is ineffective. Virtually all aspects of our national life are filled with criminally minded persons who should be locked up, but the laxity within the justice system will not allow it. Impunity is the other of the day, as the ‘nothing will happen’ mentality has pervaded the polity”.
Mr. Okechukwu suggests that “One, government should properly fund the judiciary, step two the National Judicial Counsel should be strengthened for proper supervision of the judiciary and be made to account, thirdly, we need more judicial officers as justice is the first thing that can sustain a nation. We should know that justice is the foundation of any society and so no amount spent on the judiciary and the justice system will be too much as this can always be justified by the inherent results”.
It is hoped that these views are taken into consideration as the level of depravity being exhibited by a large number of criminals who have found themselves in positions of authority are on the increase and the apparent result of this trend is that national growth and development have been stunted.
The time to act therefore is now.
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