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The President Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), on Wednesday lamented the slow pace of criminal Justice administration in the country and has proposed a 12 month time frame for the hearing and conclusion of such cases.

The president who spoke through vice president Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) at the 60th Annual Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) described the justice administration in the nations courts  as  “terribly slow pace.”

Speaking at the virtual annual conference with the theme “Stepping Forward”, the president declared that the nation’s just system needed urgent reform.

He specifically lamented how long it took the courts to adjudicate on election petitions lodged by aggrieved politicians against the outcome of the 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential elections.

President Buhari’s therefore proposed 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.

Speaking  about his  personal experience, Buhari 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.

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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? 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.”

The president equally lamented the churning out of multiple and conflicting court orders by judges, noting that in the recent leadership crisis that rocked the ruling All Progressives Congress, no fewer than eight conflicting court orders were made by different judges in a space of six weeks.

Buhari further proposed a reform of the process of judges’ appointment, recommending that aspiring judges should take tests.

Meanwhile, president Buhari who  frowned at the use of technicalities and conflicting judgments by courts of coordinate jurisdiction noted that there were several  conflicting decision by courts during the crisis of the All Progressive Congress (APC).

He decried what he described as  seeming bias over technical issues, saying that outcomes of cases must make sense to ordinary people, lawyers and non lawyers alike, adding that triumph of technicalities opened a door of suspicion.

On appointment of judges, the president said “we should get the best from different sections of the country. On security, we require full cooperation of all. People ask what is Buhari doing regarding criminal matters? But most offenses are State offenses. Police investigates, but States prosecute.

“So we need a partnership of FG and States and between executive, legislature and judiciary to drive judicial reforms. Let us pledge that in the coming years we will work together as one to build a Nigeria that would be the 4th largest population by the next 60 years.”