By Olumide Babalola
Ahead of other courts, the High Court of Lagos State had acquired the bragging rights as the progenitor of e-filing in the Nigerian judiciary. However, many lawyers have argued that e-filing remains a mirage in Lagos State but that is not why I am here.
In 2022, the Hon. Chief Judge – Justice Kazeem Alogba commendably took things further by approving digital oath-taking and thereby dispensing with the erstwhile physical visits of deponents to the court registry.
Interestingly, in 2023, the Evidence Act was amended to accommodate electronic signing of documents. Section 84(C) provides that: “A person may authenticate any electronic record by such digital signature or electronic authentication technique.” While in the interpretation section ‘electronic signature’ is defined as: “authentication of any electronic record by a subscriber by means of the electronic technique specified in the Second Schedule and includes digital signature.”
In January 2024, on the heels of all these legal innovations, from my office in Manchester, I appended my digital signature to a court process, emailed it to our litigation clerk and instructed him to file at the registry of the High Court, Lagos division. Alas!, the process was rejected for filing because, according to the court official, my signature was “scanned” hence the process could not be accepted for filing. Following this development, I wrote a letter dated 26th January 2024 to the Chief Registrar seeking clarification but the acknowledged letter remains unreplied up till the time of this open letter.
While the court official concerned may be forgiven for not updating his/her knowledge of the law, the Chief Registrar may not enjoy the same sentiment since the occupant is not only deemed to be learned, but the office is also a statutory one invested with wide powers to ease administration of justice according to the extant laws of the land. Even before the amendment of the Evidence Act, the Court of Appeal had defined a person’s signature as “Any name, mark or writing used with the intention of authenticating a document” so if a counsel chooses to use a digital mark, I think the court should respect same until the contrary is proved. (See The Vessel MV Naval Gent v Associated Commodity Int’l Ltd (2015) LPELR-25973(CA)
Conclusively, to avoid unnecessary arguments at the court’s registry over the propriety of the electronic signing of court papers, it is my respectful advice that the learned Chief Registrar informs the registry staff of the current position of the law so they can also join the technology transition that our law now enables.
God Bless the Nigerian judiciary!
