2025: Collaboration Between the Bar and Bench for Better Justice Delivery
2024 was an encouraging year in the judicial sector, with the increase in the salaries and allowances of judicial officers after over 15 years of stagnancy; an increase in the retirement age of High Court Judges to 70 to match that of the Appeal and Supreme Court Justices; the appointment of the second Female Chief Justice of Nigeria; and achieving a full Court of 21 Supreme Court Justices. But, for a better justice delivery system in 2025, Onikepo Braithwaite and Jude Igbanoi sought the views of senior Lawyers on how the Bar and the Bench can synergise to enhance it. Adeniji Kazeem, SAN; Jean Chiazor-Anishere, SAN; Ebunolu Adegboruwa, SAN; Prof Ernest Ojukwu, SAN and Dr Babatunde Ajibade, SAN express their opinions and expectations for the justice delivery system this year, areas that need urgent reforms, including digitalisation, to strengthen the judicial sector going forward
Expectations from the Nigerian Bar and Judiciary In 2025
Adeniji Kazeem, SAN
As we step into 2025, the Nigerian Bar and Judiciary stand at a pivotal moment, with remarkable opportunities to instigate reforms that could reshape the justice system in Nigeria.
The legal profession in Nigeria has always been a cornerstone of justice, equity, and fairness representing hope for the common man. Therefore, the expectations are going to be multi-faceted, and must be aimed at enhancing the justice delivery system to better serve the Nigerian populace.
Expectations From the Bar
Advocacy for Legal Reforms
The Bar is anticipated to intensify its advocacy for comprehensive legal reforms, focusing on enhancing access to justice, particularly for marginalised and underprivileged groups. This involves revising archaic laws, to align with current societal needs and global standards. A significant push towards decongesting prisons through effective legal aid and alternative sentencing mechanisms, is also essential.
Professional Development
The Bar should establish a robust framework for regular workshops, seminars, and training sessions that cover emerging legal trends, technological advancements, and best practices. This will ensure that Lawyers are well-equipped, to handle contemporary legal challenges and provide high-quality legal services.
As more Lawyers actively participate in governance, the Bar should begin to incorporate Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles into legal practice, particularly in the areas of the environment and social issues. Lawyers play an important role in driving sustainable development, and should advocate for policies and practices that align with ESG ideals in Nigeria. This will include promoting environmental sustainability, corporate accountability, and fair social practices.
Ethical Standards
We expect Lawyers in 2025 to be more efficient, meticulous, result-oriented, and professional in their dealings with clients, the courts and stakeholders. Legal practitioners should prioritise ethical standards, client satisfaction, and shun political interference in the practice of law. Lawyers must boldly advocate for justice, even in the face of opposition. The Bar must play an active role in discouraging partisanship, and ensure that Lawyers remain independent voices of justice for Nigerians. Discipline for erring Lawyers must be swift and decisive, without fear or favour.
Lawyers’ Welfare
The welfare of Lawyers, remains a critical expectation in 2025. The Bar must continue to provide support for its members, including financial assistance, health benefits, and training programmes to equip Lawyers for the future. The Bar must also continue to stand-up for Lawyers who are oppressed, harassed or intimidated, because the well-being of all Lawyers is essential to maintain a vibrant and effective Bar for the Nigerian people.
Expectations from the Judiciary
Efficiency in Case Management
The Judiciary is expected to overhaul its case management systems, to address the backlog of cases that plagues the system. Implementing modern case tracking and scheduling systems can help expedite the adjudication process, ensuring timely justice for litigants.
Technological Integration
Integrating technology into judicial processes is no longer optional, but necessary. The adoption of electronic filing systems, virtual hearings, and digital case management tools, can significantly enhance the efficiency and accessibility of the Judiciary, especially in a post-pandemic world where remote operations have become increasingly relevant.
Judicial Independence
Upholding judicial independence, is a cornerstone of a fair justice system. Judges must be insulated from external pressures, including political interference, to ensure impartial and unbiased decision-making. This autonomy is crucial for maintaining the integrity of judicial rulings, and fostering public trust in the Judiciary. In recent years, there have been concerns about the undue influence of politicians on the Judiciary, often resulting in contradictory rulings and orders. This trend should end in 2025.
The Judges should actively resist political influence and strive to remain impartial arbiters of justice, refusing external influence. Their loyalty should be to the Constitution and their Judicial Oath, the Rule of law and the Nigerian people.
Swift, transparent discipline for erring Judicial officers is going to be a very key expectation, for a reversal of negative public perception.
Judicial Precedent Awareness
The principle of stare decisis, or adherence to judicial precedents, should be rigorously upheld to ensure consistency in legal interpretations. Regular training sessions on the importance of precedent, can help Judges make informed decisions that align with established legal standards, reducing the occurrence of conflicting judgements.
Enhanced Communication Among Courts
A centralised database where courts of coordinate jurisdiction can access and review past decisions, will foster uniformity in judicial rulings. This system can serve as a repository of knowledge, aiding Judges in delivering well-considered judgements that contribute to a coherent body of law.
Assignment of Cases to Specialised Judges
Assignment of cases to Judges with specialised backgrounds on certain types of cases such as commercial, environmental, or family law, can ensure that Judges with expertise in these areas handle cases with greater precision and understanding, leading to more informed and equitable outcomes.
Adeniji Kazeem, SAN
Digitalisation is the Way to go in 2025
Jean Chiazor-Anishere, SAN
To ensure a better Judiciary in this year, 2025, the Bar and the Bench must work collaboratively to enhance transparency, public trust, efficiency and fairness in justice delivery.
Both institutions must adopt digitalisation to enhance accessibility and streamline processes, whilst ensuring that all communities can access justice. By collectively upholding the principles of fairness, diligence and impartiality, the Bar and the Bench should work together to build a Judiciary that serves the society with excellence and equity.
The Bar must prioritise ethical advocacy and professional integrity, by avoiding frivolous litigation and encouraging resolving disputes efficiently. The Nigerian Bar Association should contribute by fostering continuing legal education and mentoring young advocates, to improve the overall quality of legal representation. Advocates should also engage in constructive dialogue with the Judiciary, ensuring mutual respect and cooperation.
The Bench, on the other hand, should embrace regular training programs, to keep the Judiciary updated on evolving law and social contexts. Furthermore, the Judiciary must actively encourage transparency and accountability to reinforce public confidence. The Judiciary must also constantly deliver well reasoned judgements, ensuring quality over speed, whilst prioritising fundamental rights and justice. It is also advisable that the Bench should focus on reducing case backlogs by adopting technology for efficient case management, ensuring strict adherence to procedural timelines, and promoting alternative dispute resolution methods.
Jean Chiazor-Anishere, SAN
How Justice Delivery Can be Improved in 2025
Ebunolu Adegboruwa, SAN
Funding for the Judiciary
There is an urgent need to declare a state of emergency, in the Judiciary. The courtrooms are dilapidated, court proceedings are adjourned for lack of electricity supply, etc. The resources allocated to the Judiciary cannot give us the kind of justice we all crave for in our country. When compared with the funding of the Executive and the Legislature, the Judiciary is best described as being neglected. It is embarrassing to see Lawyers and litigants alike, standing outside the court due to lack of space or chairs to sit on.
Digitalisation and Automation
Since the global pandemic in 2020, the reality of the inevitability of technology has become more pronounced in the justice sector. We therefore, undo ourselves, if we do not make haste to embrace it holistically and eliminate to its barest minimum, the instances of human intervention in justice management and administration. The system of manual assignment of cases should stop, so that litigants have no means of choosing their own preferred Judges to handle their cases. We should develop and embrace software applications, that will handle filing and assignment of cases digitally. It will be more effective and cost friendly. It will help to eliminate the delays and frustrations, that litigants currently face. There should be options for service of processes electronically, including originating processes, as it makes no sense to file court processes digitally and then serve them manually. Technology will help reduce the incidences of conflicting and inconsistent decisions from the appellate courts, save Judges the burden of manual recording of court proceedings, and move the wheels of justice faster.
Limit Interlocutory Appeals
A radical decongestion of the Supreme Court is an urgent assignment for the Judiciary, especially in the area of interlocutory appeals. The technicality of leave and extension of time to appeal, is doing grave havoc to the administration of justice in the appellate courts. This should be simplified, to reduce the technical interpretations surrounding the exercise of the right of appeal. In simple terms, all decisions of all courts should be appealable, be it on grounds of law, of facts or of mixed law and facts. The dichotomy created for these categories of appeals is unnecessary, and should be jettisoned. A visit to the Registry of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, will show clearly that most interlocutory applications filed in these courts relate to the issues of leave to appeal and extension of time to appeal. They constitute avoidable hiccups in the prosecution of appeals and the attainment of justice within the appellate courts, which are presently seen as the burial ground of litigation. It is to say the least, scandalous, to have applications for leave or extension of time to appeal pending in court for seven or more years. In most cases, proceedings of the case in the lower court are stayed, to await these applications.
Virtual Hearing
The issue of delay in the hearing and determination of appeals can, and should be eliminated. The Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, are presently designed to favour the party seeking to delay justice. Either as the Appellant or the Respondent, once the process of appeal is initiated, the better option for the parties is to embrace settlement of the issues in controversy between them. This happens to all categories of cases, including commercial transactions. Effective justice delivery is key to investment decisions, and what this means is that, a system that drags the wheels of justice will not be a friendly destination for investors. So, apart from the litigants and their Lawyers, the nation is losing daily on account of our slow judicial system. Once sittings of the Supreme Court can be conducted virtually, a lot of the delays will be addressed. In addition to this also, is that the website of the courts should be alive, functional and active, containing all relevant information about the courts, the laws establishing them and all the rules guiding their practice and procedure. The website should also contain all the judgements of the court in their unedited versions.
Ebunolu Adegboruwa, SAN
Integrity, Discipline and Transparency Needed for Better Justice Delivery in 2025
Prof Ernest Ojukwu, SAN
To ensure a better Judiciary and justice delivery in Nigeria, both the Bar and Bench must embrace integrity, discipline, and transparency. Lawyers must commit to honesty, professionalism, and discipline in the practice of law. A justice system is only as strong as the integrity of those who uphold it. The appointment of Judges should be based on merit, through an open and transparent process that attracts the best minds, ensuring that only individuals with proven competence, character, and integrity are elevated to the Bench.
The Police and other law enforcement agencies must improve on their efficiency, especially their investigation competence and also change their character and culture of corruption.
Some of the low hanging actions that must be taken by the body of Lawyers include: amend the legal Practitioners Act to address the discipline of Lawyers in more proactive ways; get a new Rules of Professional Conduct for Lawyers – the current one has outlived its usefulness; force Law Faculties and NUC to have ethics as a core course for law students; get the mandatory continuing legal education of Lawyers into the statute, and focus a great energy on ethics training.
For the Judges – the public should have a good opportunity to comment on proposed names for appointment as Judges. Stop the secret processes, and make it more open and transparent. Persons shortlisted for Judgeship, should undergo lie detector tests. Heads of Courts and their Judicial Service Commissions must tackle the present high rate of corruption in the Court Registries, Magistrates, Customary Courts, Area Courts and support staff.
Moreover, judicial independence must be non-negotiable. The Executive, at both Federal and State levels, must show actionable commitments to strengthening the Judiciary by ensuring financial autonomy, improving infrastructure, and providing adequate resources for the administration of justice. A Judiciary that is well-supported, independent, and manned by disciplined and competent Judges and Lawyers, will inspire public confidence and guarantee justice for all.
Prof Ernest Ojukwu, SAN
Lawyers Must Avoid Technicalities for Better Justice Delivery in 2025
Dr Babatunde Ajibade, SAN
My expectations from the Bar and the Bench in 2025 is that there will be a concerted effort to address the dysfunctional nature of various aspects of our justice delivery system. Members of the Bar need to focus more on the attainment of justice for their clients through the determination of the substantive issues in dispute, rather than the prevailing tendency of focusing on technicalities to obfuscate, delay and frustrate the determination of those substantive issues. The Bench must also be proactive in exercising its extensive powers as the judex to control proceedings and checkmate these tendencies, so as to focus on the resolution of the substantive issues between the parties. These steps will go a long way, in addressing the relative ineffectiveness of our justice delivery systems.
Dr Babatunde Ajibade, SAN
