Judicial reforms: Serving judges may be barred from election tribunal

Posted by admin Headlines, Judiciary Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

STRONG indications have emerged that serving judges may have been recommended for exemption from election petition tribunals by the 29-man judicial reforms panel put in place by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Dahiru Musdapher.

He had expressed an opinion in that direction at the annual lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, which took place in Abuja last month.

Retired judges were said to have been pencilled in as replacement.

It was learnt the decision was more to curb delay in trying normal cases than alleged festering corruption.

A source also told the Nigerian Tribune that special courts for expeditious trial of alleged corruption cases by the anti-corruption commissions were also recommended by the Justice Lawal Uwais-led panel.

When the panel began its sitting, it called for memoranda from the anti-corruption agencies on the amendments needed to improve on their service delivery.

Nigerian Tribune can confirm that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) wrote to the panel, demanding special courts for the trial of corruption cases.

The panel concluded its sitting last Tuesday and submitted its report to the CJN on Wednesday.

Media consultant to the CJN, Muhammadu Adamu, upon request by the Nigerian Tribune, confirmed the conclusion of the panel’s assignment and the submission of its report to the office of the CJN at about 4.30 p.m. yesterday.

He declined further comments.

It was also learnt that a one-man panel had been raised by the office of the CJN to look at the voluminous report submitted by the panel and bring out the recommendations for consideration by the appropriate quarters.

Nigerian Tribune was told that the official handover ceremony of the panel’s report would be fixed after the legal practitioner that had been mandated to list out the recommendations concludes her assignment.

Her assignment might last just a few days.

A source also revealed that the controversial pro-vision of the 1999 Consti-tution, which bars members of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) serving on the National Judicial Council (NJC) from participating in the sanctioning of erring judges, had been recom-mended for a review by the panel.

It could not be confirmed if the power of the council to punish erring judges had been taken away from it as earlier promised by Justice Musdapher.

At press time, it could also not be confirmed if his desire to have justices of the Supreme Court hold their office for life was part of the panel’s recommendations.

With the submission of the report on Wednesday, it took the panel six weeks of deliberations to come up with its report.

Some of the recom-mendations of the panel, according to Nigerian Tri-bune findings, would require constitutional review.

The last days of the panel were reportedly chara-cterised by serious disagree-ment among the members on what should be its position on the different issues raised for consideration.

The panel was set up on 15th October, 2011, was initially given till 18th November, 2011 to submit its report.

As reported by the Nigerian Tribune, the panel ended up exceeding the deadline of November 18 by 11 days, with a source within the system adding that the CJN had granted the panel another two-week extension which was to end tomorrow.

A member of the panel, Mr O.C.J Okocha had confirmed Nigerian Tri-bune’s report that the panel did not discuss political resolution of the contro-versies surrounding the suspended president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Isa Salami.

-Tribune wp_posts