President Muhammadu Buhari has expressed his dissatisfaction at what he described as the “terribly slow pace” of justice administration in the Nigerian courts.
Buhari, on Wednesday, gave the charge that judicial system needs an urgent reform, recalling how his election petitions in previous years took longer time for it to be decided.
He suggested that the judiciary should put a time limit of 12-month on the hearing of criminal cases from the high court to the Supreme Court, while all civil cases should be concluded within 15 months.
Buhari who was represented by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osibanjo (SAN) spoke at the 60th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, with the theme, ‘Stepping Forward’.
Speaking about his experience with the judicial system, Buhari recalled how it took him two and a half years to fight for a four-year presidential mandate.
He said, “At the end, I lost all three cases. I wondered then, why it needed to take so long to arrive at a verdict, and if I had won the case, someone who did not legitimately win the election would have been in office all that time.
Buhari who is of the opinion that criminal cases must be done within a six to eight-month period. My question then is why can’t we have time limit for criminal cases? Why can’t we have a rule that will say a criminal trial all the way to the Supreme Court must not exceed 12 months? And why can’t we do the same for civil cases even if we say that civil cases must not go beyond between 12 and 15 months? I think that for me is a step forward.”
The President also complained about technical justice, saying, “If justice is to be seen to be done, then the outcome of cases must make sense to the average person and not just the lawyers.”