A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ahmed Raji, has said that Nigerians should shift focus away from the corruption allegations levelled against the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mohammed Tanko.
Raji said this on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Tuesday.
According to him, the judicial system following Tanko’s resignation should move forward and profer solutions to the system’s structural problems.
Demanding a shift of focus from the allegation of impropriety raised against the ex-CJN by 14 Supreme court justices, the senior lawyer said, “That should not be the main focus now. This is the point I’m making, all those may be looked into, maybe later but this should not be the primary focus, otherwise, the current people who are there will lose focus.
“They should concentrate. The court is over-congested. When you file an appeal in the supreme court, with the best whatever, you may not get it heard until after seven years. So, these are the issues.”
“Today, in the court of Appeal, Lagos division alone, they have over 10000 cases in their dockets, and in a year they can only run about 600 or 500 cases, so, every year we have over 1000 cases or appeals being filed.
“How do they cope with this, which means in another five years, we will have a backlog of over 20,000 cases. This is what we have to do forensic analysis and find out, develop skills by which we can decongest the court, otherwise in the nearest future, the court system may fail.
“This is what I believe we should focus our attention on, it’s beyond individual justices, this is what I am looking at, not just saying is it Lordship supposed to resign, it’s his right to resign. I think we should let the sleeping dog lie and wish him well,” he noted
“These are all the major structural problems that should be looked into, they are not being well paid at all, at all, I repeat they are not being well paid,” he added.
