‘Justice delivery should be part of national conference’

Which areas of intervention has PRAWA been involved in?Prawa has been working in the criminal justice sector by engaging stakeholders to drive reform initiatives and to promote reforms in the justice sector in Africa. This project is being supported by Justice For All (J4A). We are intervening in the criminal justice sector to drive needed […]

Which areas of intervention has PRAWA been involved in?
Prawa has been working in the criminal justice sector by engaging stakeholders to drive reform initiatives and to promote reforms in the justice sector in Africa. This project is being supported by Justice For All (J4A). We are intervening in the criminal justice sector to drive needed reforms. The project started with a diagnostic phase in Enugu and we moved on to Abuja as well to run the project. The unique feature of the project is that we didn’t come with one-sided intervention approach. Rather we invited stakeholders and engaged them with the issues in the administration of criminal justice and to proffer solutions. We had stakeholders coming from investigation,  prosecution agencies and the judiciary. We had judges, Police, NDLEA, NAPTIP, EFCC, ICPC, Prisons and LACON. Put together the group that participated for the initial work is roughly 10 criminal justice institutions.
We understand you are also into training of lawyers on some of these criminal cases?
We have project interventions for speeding criminal justice in both Enugu and the FCT. In the FCT we have six mini projects such as Project 1: Enhancing high and quality prosecutions; Project 2: Enhancing attendance of witnesses in court; Project 3: Enhancing attendance of accused persons in court; Project 4: Enhancing legal representation for accused persons; and Project 5: Promoting efficient management of court proceedings; Project 6 is about coordinating some of these interventions.

One of the challenges in the justice sector is that justice delivery is very slow. As a result, the courts are overstretched and the prisons are over congested with awaiting trial inmates. A recent research says 70 per cent of prison inmates are awaiting trial, which should not be because they are presumed innocent until proven guilty. This is a misnomer which we shouldn’t allow to get deepened in our criminal justice sector.
One of the reasons why awaiting trial population is increasing in prisons is because many of the inmates don’t have lawyers to defend them. Some of them do not understand the proceedings in court. They are being arrested for committing alleged offence and arraigned and remanded in prison.
Project 4 is fashioned to assist them and it is anchored in LACON. And you know it has the mandate to provided pro bono services for indigent prison inmates.
In terms of funding and manpower, the LACON is limited. So project 4 is to complement their efforts. Under the project, we have a clearing house, which is like a data system. It provides a sort of clearing house where the data of lawyers who have interest in offering pro bono services are captured and awaiting trial inmates who do not have representation are equally captured and we match people in need of lawyers who have the requisite specialization to tackle their peculiar cases. We have lawyers in the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and LACON participating. This has enabled more lawyers through that platform come to the aid of LACON without necessarily being staffed in LACON.
How has reception been for this project?
The programme has been well received from across board by all the stakeholders. For instance in the FCT, the former and current Chief Judge received it well. The various heads of the Prisons, EFCC, ICPC, LACON, and the Police have all welcomed this initiative because it is a project that is crafted to help improve on what they are doing in order to achieve better results.
The lawyers have been enthusiastic. The Unity Bar for instance set up a screening process and asked lawyers questions with a view to getting the right people. This is with a view to getting people who are interested; who are looking for areas to give back to society; it is a way for lawyers doing corporate social responsibility. Promotion in the profession recognizes that lawyers need to do some level of pro bono cases. For instance, you can’t become a Senior Advocate of Nigeria until you have done a number of pro bono cases from the lower courts to the apex court. So, for us this is even broadening and providing a ready pool from where these lawyers can easily come and say let’s handle some of these cases, even though we don’t get paid for it, but will help us get to a certain level in our profession sometime in the future.

What is your position on the adoption of restorative justice for the country?
Given the work we have done and our aims and objectives especially our rehabilitation works, we believe strongly in the rehabilitative aspects; we believe strongly in rehabilitating offenders. Every system that promotes rehabilitation and re-integration fits into our mandate. If you look at the philosophical background to our penal system and our prisons, it was to punish offenders and deter – which should not be. Prison should be a place of correction. It is good we have a prison reform bill which is looking more into issues of correction rather than issues of punishment. Justice is not served when an offender gets punished. No, the offender is a member of the society. One day he is coming back to the society. How have you prepared him to fit into the society?
Considering that plea bargain is part of restorative justice, what has been its challenge in Nigeria?
The concept of plea bargain cuts across jurisdictions even in the UK and many developed parts of the world. It’s part of so many developed countries’ penal systems. It is a concept that could be used for the benefit of society ultimately. The problem in Nigeria has always been the application. If an offender is caught, instead of going the whole hog and wasting the time of the court, if he owns up and saves resources and exchange for this, he forfeits all the looted proceeds and instead of a higher sentence, a medium one could be given. The mere fact that a person carries the label ‘ex-convict’ is very strong enough.
What is your project doing about female inmates and nursing mothers in jail?
We advocate usage of non-custodial measures for nursing mothers and pregnant women. Maybe in light cases, they may give them community service, while in grievous cases, we could adopt suspended sentence. The lady could be convicted, but her sentence could come after she might have weaned the baby.
What bills are you presenting for reform in the justice sector?
Issues of justice sector reform should be clearly addressed, especially those with constitutional implications. Even though our National Assembly is making efforts at that and the committee on the dialogue is going around to aggregate views on the structure, the content and what have you regarding the dialogue, we think strongly that justice delivery issues should be given prominence within this discussion.

There are so many things that are not going well with justice administration in Nigeria. We need to know that for any society to achieve some of the lofty ideals of its fore-fathers, it needs to rest on the principles of equity and justice. Equal opportunity should be given to every citizen. Justice is blind; everybody should be subjected to the same standard of justice. We also need to check issue of impunity in Nigeria.