In a contribution made to Vanguard Newspaper on 30 September 2019, Andrew Skipper remarked: “The strength of the Rule of Law in a country ranks among the top three considerations when multinationals make decisions about where to locate foreign direct investment – above considerations such as the cost of doing business and access to national and regional markets.”
The recently retired Justice of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice Oludotun Adefope-Okojie acquiesced to this position she averred that a country that seeks foreign investment must get its court system functional, accelerated and receptive to the needs of the domestic and international people.
Adefope-Okojie who made the statement during her valedictory session on Tuesday, also pointed out that the state of justice delivery in Nigeria has so degenerated that an urgent solution is desperately needed.
Her Lordship who spent 27 years on the bench, said it was unacceptable that a case averagely takes more than five years to conclude at trial, more than three years in the Court of Appeal, and an average of about 12 years in the Supreme Court.
Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ikeazor Akaraiwe in an interview told Law & Society that: “We must take a holistic view of the problems of justice delivery, and move away from longhand recording of cases. A combination of electronic and stenographic recording is ideal. What is the main factor militating against electronic recording in courts? Power supply. We should deal with the power supply problem by ensuring a combination of generators, solar energy, and inverters for every court on the land… It solves a problem across board.
“Secondly, we need to have a judicial policy that judges or magistrates should not have more than 50 cases in his / her docket in a given year. This enables day-to-day trials, and therefore, a conclusion of cases. Nigerian lawyers and judexes do not know that adjournments of one, two, three months during hearings are an aberration.
“Thirdly, the judicial policy should insist on day-to-day trial of all cases. When cases are filed, judges may fix hearing against 6 or 12 months’ time, and thereafter, hear those cases daily until the conclusion. Adjournments should not be entertained.
“Fourthly, the judicial policy should ensure that when judges’ dockets begin to go beyond 50 cases in a year, new judges are appointed. I still cannot get over the 60-court complex we saw in Vancouver, Canada in 2010, when some of us took a break from the 2010 IBA Conference to visit their courts. We wondered if the 60 court complex was for the entire Province of British Columbia, and the court administrator said ‘No, Victoria City, the capital next door had a similar court complex!’ Directly opposite this court complex was a similar-sized magistrates’ court complex!
Addressing a full courtroom of judges, well-wishers, and family members, Oludotun Adefope-Okojie observed that no country or business wants to invest in a country where judicial disputes take forever to conclude at all. Adefope-Okojie, therefore, suggested that the judiciary should embrace arbitration to speed up justice delivery.
In her words: “As most international companies, including domestic ones, have arbitration clauses in their contracts, to avoid the legal system and determine disputes expeditiously, the Courts must encourage arbitration rather than consider it a challenge to their authority.
“Trial court judges with less than two years to retire must not be assigned new cases. They should finish all the cases on their docket rather than leave matters part heard to be commenced de novo.
“Any case that is not concluded before the retirement, death or elevation of the trial judge must not be made to start de novo, except if the witness had not finished evidence and cross-examined.’’
President of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, who was at the event described Adefope-Okojie as hardworking, fair-minded, and courteous.
