President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday proposed a 12-month period within which criminal cases should be completed in Nigeria.
Speaking at the 60th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, with the theme, “Stepping Forward,” the president described the administration of justice in the country as moving at a “terribly slow pace”.
He was represented at the virtual conference by the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN).
“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 stepping forward,” he said.
Going down memory lane, Buhari recounted how long the process took for the courts to decide and eventually dismiss the election petitions he filed to challenge his losses in the 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential polls. His verdict was that the Nigerian justice system was in need of urgent reform.
He suggested that the judiciary should put a 12-month time limit on the hearing of criminal cases from the high court to the Supreme Court, while all civil cases should be concluded within 15 months.
“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,” he noted.
But he noted that the changes introduced thereafter indicated that the system of justice administration can be improved upon.
“In 2019, I was no longer petitioner; I had now become a respondent in the case of Atiku and Buhari and the whole process took barely six months; just over six months. What was the difference? The law had changed since my own in 2003, 2007 and 2011. You had now introduced time limits for election petitions. Everything must be done within a six to eight-month period. My question then is why can’t we have a time limit for criminal cases?
Buhari also decried the way judges issue multiple and conflicting court orders, and noted that in the recent leadership crisis that rocked the ruling All Progressives Congress, at least eight conflicting court orders were given by different judges within six weeks.
