- Body of Senior Advocates seeks Constitutional court for election issues
The Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho said on Monday that the court was not consulted by National Assembly before giving it the exclusive duty to handle all election matters in the country.
Justice Tsoho made this known in Abuja at the commencement of the court’s 2022/2023 new legal year added that the duty entrusted on FHC by the Electoral Act 2022 “weighed heavily on the operations of the court.”
“By virtue of Section 29(5) and 84(14), of the Act , exclusive jurisdiction is foisted on the Federal High Court in the hearing and determination of Pre- election complaints.a Linked to that jurisdiction is Section 285(10) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) which provides that such Pre-election cases must be concluded within 180 days from the date filing of the suit”.
The Chief Judge said that despite the huge burden ” no support whatsoever was provided to address the increased responsibility.”
He said however, that the”disruption” caused by the additional workload “without consultation, did not alter our fundamental core value as a court: of rising to the challenges and tackling them head on.”
Justice Tsoho thanked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola for understanding the court precarious situation and for approving emergency fund to support the court assignment.
He said that with the intervention ,a total of 1,838 Pre election cases that was filed in the court 1,285 cases have been disposed of , leaving a total of 556 cases pending.
A total of 131,821 cases was carried from 2020/2021 Legal year to 2021/2022 legal year while 17, 677 cases was filed same year.
While the Federal High Court disposed of 13,677 cases , a total of 135, 592 cases are pending at the end of the legal year.
Meanwhile, the Body of Senior Advocates has called for establishment of National Constitutional court of Nigeria.
Chief Adegboyinga Awomolo , SAN, who spoke on behalf of the body at the court new legal year, said the court if established should handle all constitutional, political and election matters.
” It will be a Federal Court, of the status of a High court with divisions in all the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory.The Court will have unlimited jurisdiction to determine all causes relating to Enforcement off or connected with interpretation of the Constitution, Enforcement of fundamental rights of the citizens, determination as to whether any person has been lawfully elected into any office from the President, to the State Governors and members of all the Legislative houses.”
According to him,the Court will be like the National Industrial Court of Nigeria that exercises jurisdiction on matters related to employment and other industrial related matters.
Awomolo said that appeal on decisions of the Constitutional court will go to the Court of Appeal which will have a final say.
“There will no longer be the need to take away about 500 judges from their normal court responsibilities to sit on Election Tribunals all over the country,” he added.
Awomolo said that there are Constitutional courts in many countries of the world,where such jurisdictions as proposed function effectively to relieve regular Courts of political cases.
He said that countries like India, South Africa, South Korea, Egypt, Zambia, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany operates Constitutional courts and Nigeria has enough human resources to man such court when established.
On it part, the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, said that the suspension of all other matters in Court for judges to attend to pre- election matters come with great cost and had adversely affected the economy.
President of NBA, Yakubu Maikyau called on National Assembly to consider an amendment to the constitution that would enable courts pay similar attention and speedy to all other matters .
He also spoke of the need for lawyers to help build public confidence on our courts adding that to make derogatory statement on the decisions of the courts is a call for anarchy.