Electoral Matters Overburdening Our Judiciary

A former Chairman, Section of Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL), Nigerian Bar Association, Monday Ubani, says all speakers from a recent conference by the group believe that the Nigerian judiciary is overburdened by electoral matters.

Ubani said this on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Tuesday while reacting to the suggestion by legal icon, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, that electoral matters should be handled by retired judges and respected SANs to avoid halting cases unrelated to elections.

The former SPIDEL Chairman said that most criminal and civil cases in court all over the country have been put on hold owing to judges’ engagement with election petition tribunals.

“SPIDEL just finished a conference in Lagos and part of the discussion is this issue of judicial intervention in electoral matters and the conclusion by all speakers invited is that we are really overburdening our judiciary with this issue of electoral matters.

“If you go to almost all the courts in the country today, all the criminal and civil cases are on permanent adjournments pending the time that the judges come back from election petition tribunals, where most of them have been assigned to go and do that responsibility.

“The criminal cases are not going, the civil cases are not going, even those on fundamental human right ordinarily should receive priority is not given that due attention because of the issue of election petition tribunal currently going on,” Ubani said.

He suggested that something should be done to ensure that the electoral process comes to a level of fairness that people do not in any way go to court to challenge some of the election outcomes.

The senior lawyer also lamented the issue of abuse of ex parte, saying that it is only on very rare issues that perhaps have to do with the destruction of that subject matter that should make a court interfere with an ex parte order.