Financial Autonomy Strike: Why Full Virtual Hearing Is Difficult For Federal High Court

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The Federal High Court has said its scramble to catch up with
the trend of adoption of virtual hearing amid the closure of
physical courts during the ongoing judiciary workers’ nationwide
strike, is being hampered by lack of fund, According to
PREMIUM
TIMES report.^[1]

Federal High Court is among many Nigerian courts that still
sparingly embrace virtual hearing despite putting in place the
COVID-19-motivated practice directions recognising remote
proceedings since last year.

This newspaper learnt that the Chief Judge of the court, John
Tsoho, had directed his colleagues to deliver judgements via
virtual court sitting while the judiciary workers’ strike which
entered its seventh week on Tuesday, lingers.

But the court told our reporter that it could not fully join the
trend being adopted by other courts due to paucity of fund.

Limited facilities
The court’s Chief Information Officer, Catherine Nwandu, said lack
of funds had hampered the installation of virtual court facilities
across all its jurisdictions.

Mrs Nwandu, however, said the court’s divisions in Abuja, Kano,
Lagos and Port-Harcourt had been delivering judgements through
virtual proceedings.

“Our judges have been delivering judgements via virtual court
proceedings while the strike lingers, but where we have Internet
facilities are Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt and Kano Divisions.

“Because of lack of funds, the rest of the court’s divisions
cannot sit virtually. We are still trying to cope with essential
needs; because of financial constraint, we decided to look at
Abuja, Lagos, Port-Harcourt and Kano jurisdictions,” she said.

She attributed the funding problem to the yearly fall in the
court’s allocations.

“The budget of the Federal High Court has been on a downward
trend; it kept going down whereas we keep recruiting more judges.
The budget has been going down for years now,” he said.

Mrs Nwandu explained that the court’s judges had been delivering
judgements on time-bound cases like political matters.

“During the coronavirus pandemic, the National Judicial Council
(NJC) constituted a committee on virtual court sitting, which the
Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho is a
member,” she said.

But she added that with the Federal High Court having divisions
in all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital
Territory of Abuja, “to replicate virtual court proceedings
facilities across all the divisions require funds.”

Incidentally, workers under the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria
(JUSUN), embarked on the ongoing nationwide strike on April 6 in
agitation for the financial independence of the judiciary which
they hope would lead to more allocation of funds to the third arm
of government.

COVID and virtual hearing
During last year’s COVID-19 lockdown, the court’s Chief Judge, like
heads of many other courts in the country, guided by the NJC,
issued a practice direction adopting virtual proceedings in May
2020.

The Federal High Court’s version of the practice direction also
recognised electronic means of serving court documents and hearing
notices during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

Despite having this in place, many courts barely embraced
virtual hearing before they fully reopened as the lockdown eased up
last year.

But with the judiciary workers’ strike persisting, many of those
courts are now racing to join the trend of remote hearings amid
rising concerns about judges missing deadlines for delivery of
judgments and huge backlog of cases left unaddressed.

The Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, and the National
Industrial Court, all federal institutions, have held skeletal
virtual proceedings during the ongoing strike which started on
April 6.

Among them all, only the National Industrial Court stands out as
the only one that has fully adopted virtual hearing even before the
ongoing strike began.

Judiciary’s quest for improved funding
In November 2020, the NJC identified poor allocation of fund as the
bane of the judiciary’s efforts to digitise its operations.

Appearing for the budget defence at the House of
Representatives’ Committee on Judiciary, the commission’s Executive
Secretary of the council, Ahmed Saleh, appealed to the legislative
and executive arms of government to increase the funding for the
judiciary in line with the realities of the times.

He said some of the challenges facing the judiciary include the
non-disbursement of the financial relief promised in the wake of
the pandemic.

Mr Saleh also stated that the Supreme Court had, at the time,
increased its judges from 12 to 20 which according to him requires
more expenses.

He added that the COVID-19 pandemic caused the judiciary to
continue to leverage on ICT “which requires more money.”

Ex-CJNs lament insufficient funds
A former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Aloma Mukhtar, had during
the Supreme Court’s new legal year ceremony held on September 23,
2013, lamented the poor funding of Nigeria’s judiciary.

She said budgetary allocation to the judiciary had steadily
declined from N95 billion in 2010 to N85 billion in 2011, N75
billion in 2012 and to N67 billion in 2013.

“A situation where budgetary allocation to the judiciary
continues to drop while the general government budget is on a
steady increase every year is clearly an impediment to the quick
dispensation of justice in Nigeria and on the whole a setback to
the current effort at transforming the judiciary,” she had
said.

Similarly speaking on the issue years later in 2016, Ms
Mukhtar’s predecessor, Mahmud Mohammed, said “budgetary challenges
permeating the nation, no doubt affects the Judiciary more than any
other arm of government, and remains a perennial challenge to
judicial independence and the effective performance of our
constitutional roles.”