Presidential election appeal: Lawyers decry shortage of supreme court justices

NAIJA NEWS

Senior lawyers in Nigeria have pointed out that the country’s Supreme Court is currently short on justices, hence, they fear that the 60-day presidential election appeal period in the apex court would put other appeals on hold unduly.

Naija News has reported that Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) unsuccessfully challenged the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC).

Hence, they are expected to appeal the ruling of the PEPC’s ruling within 14 days of the ruling. Since the ruling was on September 6, they have until Wednesday, September 20, to file their appeal before the Supreme Court. This is expected to lead to unwarranted issues in the justice system of Nigeria due to a shortage of justices.

Note that the country’s constitution mandates that there should be 21 justices at the Supreme Court level but there are only eleven active justices at the apex court because several recently retired justices have not been replaced.

The Supreme Court is expected to select a panel of seven justices to hear the presidential appeal which means that only four justices will be available to hear other cases at the apex court because other justices will be busy focusing on other election petitions during the 60 days permitted under the constitution.

The four judges who will be left to focus on other pending appeals will not be enough to carry out their duties because the Supreme Court requires at least five justices to hear cases.

The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, gave the justices a breakdown of the size of the work before them in November by citing that there were 6,884 cases on the court’s waiting list.

Due to the obvious challenge of the shortage of justices, the National Judicial Council (NJC) requested applications in June after announcing the existence of 10 new Supreme Court bench openings.

Eleven candidates are now going through the screening and interview procedure required to name new justices, claims a top Supreme Court official via the Nations Newspaper.

The NJC will make recommendations to…