Impact investors in Nigeria have focused on financial services, agriculture, health, housing, ICT, energy, and services, as the sectors of importance to them. Other sectors that attract their attention include manufacturing, infrastructure, education, tourism, water and sanitation, construction, and real estate.
However, these investors have paid little or no attention to the areas of rule of law, universal right to justice, and fairness. There has been a long-held but erroneous view that justice issues should be addressed only by international bodies or the government. Hence, most impact investors are concerned with social and environmental benefits as the pivots of sustainability in such areas as natural resource protection, good health and well-being, and poverty alleviation.
Source: Global Impact Investing Network, BRIU
Analysts have the consensus opinion that there is high need for impact investors to support innovations that can improve efficiency and transparency in Nigeria’s legal system, especially in the area of Information Technology (IT). IT has continued to play crucial roles in the economic, social, and other aspects of lives of many a nation. Likewise, the increasing nature and advancement of information technology (IT) due to technological innovations has developed new opportunities for improving the arguably poor justice delivery system in Nigeria.
Source: Global Impact Investing Network, BRIU
Towards Technology Adoption for the Nigerian Judicial Sector
In conventional Nigerian courts, filing of court matters are done manually as the judges spend avoidably too much time in processes of deciding cases and delivering justice, often encountering stress in the process. The stress is caused by the difficulty encountered in filing and retrieving information from the piles of paper works and manual data input.
Furthermore, considering the number of case filings handled by the courts daily, it is acknowledged that there is inadequate number of personnel to adequately attend to legal matters that ordinarily should be treated with despatch. Lack of electronic recording tools leads to manual data entries by judicial officers, exposing the deep deficiency in the judicial sector.
The need for investment in IT to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the Nigerian justice system was acknowledged by M.D Abubakar, a Chief Judge of Katsina State.
“In the past two decades, Judges and Lawyers had pondered over the application of Information and Communication Technology in the judicial and legal processes and have asked questions on whether ICT could apply and work in a court of law,” Abubakar said in his publication entitled ‘Impact of Information Technology on the law and court processes’.
Natural incidences such as fire outbreaks and floods, and human activities such as burglary in the law court, pose potent danger to security of court database. In 20o4 for instance, the Lagos High Court was engulfed by fire, leading to destruction of valuable court files. Rivers State High Court in Degema equally had its share of this disaster as fire engulfed two court rooms in 2015. Similarly, other states have had fire outbreaks in their various law courts at one point or another.
The implication of this is that justice is stalled or prolonged unnecessarily, while the (poor) people in the society groan from the debacle of delayed justice delivery.
Anticipated Impact of IT in the Nigerian Judicial System
IT (E-filing and Legal Tech for example) has presented evidence that IT can play in resolving observed challenges of ineffectiveness in judicial processes, delay in deciding cases and delivering justice, and lack of transparency and integrity in the judicial system.
According to Adisa Oluwole, a Senior Litigation Counsel, ‘E-filing’ means that a matter once litigated and assessed is first scanned and uploaded on the portal designated for such. Litigators/Lawyers login to the portal with their credentials to assess the documents. Through this, they will be able to know the judge(s) and court their cases have been assigned to, without visiting the court.
Through this E-filing process of suits, the Lagos state government has been able to evolving a system that enables them know properties that are sub-judice in property transaction, by simply logging in the details of the transaction into the portal.
Section 84 of the Evidence Act has given recognition to electronic evidence (audio, video, emails, even whatsApp and BBM messages), which can be accepted if certificate of identification showing the brand name, the production date and a statement that the computer has been producing similar documents as the evidence is tendered.
According to Oluwole, only the High court of Lagos in the last four years commenced the process of E-filing. National Industrial Court is tilting towards E-filing which was included the Order 6A Rules 1 and 2 of the National Industrial Court Rules 2017.
Recent introduction of “Legal Tech”, an online platform where lawyers can access electronic law reports of the Nigerian Supreme Court and Court of Appeal and laws just by subscribing, has empowered judicial officers to perform their duties more efficiently. As Law Pavilion Electronic Law Report (LPELR) leads the pack of legal tech platforms, impact investors should look towards encouraging creative minds to develop even more efficient IT solutions for the legal system. A semblance of ‘angel impact investment’ is apt in this regard.
Challenges of adopting IT in Judicial Sector
Lack of awareness regarding the impact of IT on law and justice has been a major obstacle to its adoption in judicial processes. This lack of awareness is rooted in universities where use of power point presentation in law practices and use of IT in delivering justice are not taught; the mind-set is that IT has no relevance to the legal profession.
Impact investors can play a significant role in this regards by working with stakeholders to present to the National Universities Commission (NUC), Nigerian law schools, and the various states that are yet to adopt IT, the importance of adopting IT in the law programme.
Other factors such as lack of funds to finance IT, lack of IT skills acquisition by judicial officers, Poor power supply, poor network provisions by internet service providers, and computer have challenged the adoption of IT in the judicial sector.
Hence, aside from creating awareness on the importance of IT adoption in the Nigerian judicial sector, impact investors can invest in technologies that support electronic filing of law cases and retrieval of information to improve efficiency in justice delivery.
Adopting IT in court proceedings that will speed up justice delivery is anchored on having the needed skilled personnel to drive the electronic process. Creating digital training institutes where youths can be trained in the area of application of technology to judicial procedural works should be an area of focus for impact investors.
Finally, considering the dearth of energy supply in the country, a major impediment to IT application to the judicial process, impact investors can invest in cheap, sustainable energy sources (e.g. solar and wind) of power supply to court rooms and court-related electronic gadgets. Not only will this result in effective dispensation of justice, but also in the protection of the environment against environmental ruin, a ke
y focus of impact investing in the general sense.