President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the administration of justice in Nigerian courts moves at a “terribly slow pace”.
The President said this while speaking at the 60th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), proposing a 12-month time limit for criminal cases to be heard and decided upon.
The President who was represented by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said it took so long for the tribunal to hear matters and pass their verdicts following his loss in 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential polls.
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.
“In 2019, I was no longer a 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.”
The President added that since time limit had been set for electoral cases, criminals and civil matters should also have time-bound.
“My question then is why can’t we have a 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 stepping forward,” he added.
Buhari also speaks on judges’ appointment, saying that aspiring judges should take the test.
He then condemned the number of conflicting court orders by judges, noting that at least, eight conflicting court orders were made by different judges within six weeks when leadership crisis was rocking the All Progressives Congress.
