From Henry Uche
Senior Advocate of Nigeria and one of the facilitators of the recently concluded retreat of the EU-International IDEA sponsored RoLAC II in Ilorin, Prof Mohammed Tabiu, SAN in this interview speaks on the task of reforming the justice system in the country among other issues.
After three days of the RoLAC Phase II retreat in Ilorin, what would you say are the key reasons that brought you to Ilorin?
The main focus of our discussion is to see how our justice system can be better coordinated, and the participants came from coordinating groups established by various state governments to harmonize how actors in the justice system can come back together to improve the delivery of justice. It is the coordination, the harmony and the collaboration that makes this retreat unique. In the course of the three days event, we have looked at a variety of activities that are going on in our states, and it is very impressive to see that in these states much effort is going into the improvement of the administration of justice, particularly, criminal justice. RoLAC II has been working to see that this type of development is harmonized among the state, is supported so that it can achieve better results, and that when we get the results, we can also share the lessons with others who will now ensure that the benefits are spread across the country. We have representatives from almost 25 states of the country. They have exchanged lessons and experiences about improving the criminal justice system. How can we make it speedier? How can we decongest the prisons? How can we deliver justice in such a way that citizens can have confidence in the system? How do we see that in the administration of the criminal justice system, we don’t violate the rights of individuals who are involved with the justice system? These are the principles of justice, respect for human rights making justice more understandable to citizens. These are the matters that have occupied us.
Would you say that so far the aim was achieved and that we will better coordinate in various states in the administration of criminal Justice in Nigeria?
People are going away from this workshop with greater confidence that they are going away with the tools to improve the justice system and to take into account the rights of the citizens and particularly to implement the administration of the Criminal Justice act, which are being adopted by our various states; so that the delivery of Criminal Justice is better across the country and delivered in a coordinated way.
I’m sure you’re aware that there have been many retreats such as this in the past with little or no significance in the improvement of the justice system in Nigeria. How does this one propose to be different from what we had in the past?
It’s very significant that in this forum, we have people who are not only working in the justice sector, but are doing it in a coordinated way. It’s the coordination, the harmony and the collaboration that is important. And why is this important? After many years, it has now been realized that no single institution of justice on its own can solve the problem. But we need to come together. You know that the justice process involves many processes. If a crime is committed, first you have the police who will come in first, investigate, and hand it over to the ministry of Justice who will prosecute. And the Ministry will go to the court, the court may remand the person in prison. So, we have a number of institutions. There will also be private lawyers who will come in to defend the suspect or defendant. In all these, you need collaboration, you need harmony, and you need the institutions moving in the same direction, that is what is so special about this meeting. But the realization that coordination is important and also, for this to be achieved, there are certain standards that the institutions must observe, guided by the constitution, guided by existing laws like Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) and ACJA domestication in states and supported. Also, identification of challenges; the fact that for this to happen, resources are needed, political will from leaders of the country, realizing that without the effective administration of criminal justice, the problems facing the country cannot be addressed.
In the short and long term, what impact should we look forward to if there is a quick up take of your recommendations from this retreat?
How can you tackle insecurity without an effective criminal justice system? How do you grow the economy when you have not instilled such discipline in your system, that outsiders can have confidence and come to invest in it. People who are in the country and have resources to invest, they know that in the course of their business dealings, there will be disputes. If those disputes now take them away from their businesses because of the delays in the courts, difficulties and too many technicalities in the system, they will now be spending more of their time in court rather than in their businesses. All that, as you know, doesn’t help to develop the economy. How about the democracy that we are talking about, where we want peace and progress? We want more unity among our people.
After this stage of meeting and conferencing, what is the next phase?
The next stage is that at this meeting, we have taken notes of the challenges that we face. There are resolutions on how to tackle those challenges. For instance, we know that we need to deploy more technology in order for the justice system to be efficient and to be effective. People are going away with the idea that police need the technology to detect crime better and put the evidence together to make it more credible. Even the courts know that in order to speed up the processes they need to deploy technologies. So, they are taking all that away to go and introduce that measure at their respective stations. This meeting is not a one-off meeting. It is a periodic meeting, two times a year for the actors in the justice system who are interested in a coordinated approach to delivering justice that International IDEA is supporting in Nigeria. These people will now go and deploy the new measures that we have been talking about. One day, when we come to another meeting, we assess progress, then we set for ourselves higher targets to achieve.
