By Ikechukwu Nnochiri

ABUJA – Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Dahiru Musdapher, yesterday, said he would establish a special court with the sole jurisdiction of trying cases bothering on official corruption and economic crimes.

The CJN further maintained that the idea of divesting the regular courts of such criminal cases and allowing the special court to adjudicate on them would be experimented upon for two years with a view to appraising the achievement level vis-a-vis what obtains presently.

According to him, “thereafter, jurisdiction to try such cases would strictly be vested in the Federal High courts, which administratively only those situated in Lagos and Abuja would thereafter serve as pilot courts for the two-year experiment.”

In a statement signed by his Media Adviser, Mohammed Adamu, the CJN, made the declaration when he received the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Lamorde, who led a delegation of lawyers prosecuting economic crimes for the agency, to pay a courtesy visit to the CJN in his chamber at the Supreme Court, yesterday.

Among those that visited the CJN were P. H. Ogbole, N. A. Banjo, A. Basil, E. Akumayi and M. Jibo.

Addressing them, the CJN noted: “To cope with this challenge, more judges would be added soon to the Federal High Court to hear these corruption cases day in day out for two years and let’s see. However, this judicial novelty can only be sustained if the EFCC and similar prosecuting agencies become pro-active in their investigation.

“For this to work, you will have to be proactive in your investigations and you may even have to increase the number of your investigators to cope with the challenge”, he added.

In his response, the acting EFCC boss, Lamorde, assured the CJN of the continuing in-house training and retraining tradition of the EFCC especially in the area of investigation, even as he called on the CJN to encourage Chief Judges of various courts in the country to buy into the six-month deadline for the prosecution of corruption cases.

-Vanguard

Posted by admin on Dec 13 2011. Filed under Headlines, Judiciary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry