Rating for judges: Matters arising

The Citizens for Better Justice Initiative (CBJI), a non-governmental organisation which is a citizen-driven judicial performance standards and rating system has commenced the rating of sitting judges especially in the high courts that will compliment similar initiatives adopted by the National Judicial Council (NJC). The objective of both the CBJI and the NJC initiatives is […]

The Citizens for Better Justice Initiative (CBJI), a non-governmental organisation which is a citizen-driven judicial performance standards and rating system has commenced the rating of sitting judges especially in the high courts that will compliment similar initiatives adopted by the National Judicial Council (NJC).
The objective of both the CBJI and the NJC initiatives is to make the judiciary work better for the citizens.
While the NJC’s initiative is government driven and mostly for internal administrative purposes as the results of such efforts are mostly not for public consumption, the CBJI’s initiative, according to the facilitator, Philip Chukwueke, is for the consumption of the stakeholders in the judicial system and citizens at large with the hope that the programme will drive positive and sustained behavioral changes at the various high court benches in the federation.
His words: “The CBJI survey system was created to serve as a common language for describing, classifying and gauging the performance of sitting judges in the various high courts in Nigeria. Developing this framework is a two-year effort that culminated in the launching of the CBJI portal in May, 2015.”
Philip, who is the CEO, Communication Towers, said during an interview with Daily Trust that the concept was borrowed largely from the American Bar Association judicial survey template. He added that it surveys five key areas of Judicial performance – legal ability; integrity and impartiality; communication skills; professionalism; and administrative capacity.
According to him, there is cautious optimism that the initiative will over time shape the behaviour of the bench towards a more fair and efficient adjudication and disposition of cases brought before the courts.
He said further that the CBJI is not connected to government in any way; it is not a publish and shame portal; it is not a witch-hunting undertaking and it is not a circus for the unserious even as it is not publicly funded.
Apart from Philip Chukwueke, president  CBJI, other facilitators are Mr. Sylvester Imhanobe, Secretary – CBJI; Hajiya Fatima Kere-Ahmed, D,irector – CBJI Stakeholder Outreach and Yinka Folawiyo.
Under the framework of this MOU, CBJI will work  diligently with the bar association to refine the survey process to ensure that it accomplishes what it is supposed to accomplish – provide a framework to recognise the excellent job many distinguished justices of the high courts are doing while serving on the bench and at the same time encourage others to aspire to judicial excellence.
CBJI board of trustees includes Justice Umaru Abdullahi (rtd), a former president of the Court of Appeal and a former Chief Judge of Rivers State, Justice Iche Ndu, (rtd).
The survey which will cover a total of 47 jurisdictions nationwide will include – Court of Appeal, Federal High Courts, National Industrial Court, FCT High Court; and the 36 states’ High Courts.
The mission of the CBJI include to make positive contribution to the judicial process in Nigeria, enhance the image of the judiciary, publicly acknowledge professional excellence on the bench and to provide a ‘mirror’ for profiled judges for self-calibration.
It was gathered that the survey period will be from January 1st – December 31st, while the result will be published in March. From the survey data, three groupings will emerge as follows- the golden club: 70%; the silver club – 40-69% and the bronze club: 40%.
However, some lawyers have highlighted some of the likely challenges that may face the CBJI survey. First, not many lawyers who are the major stakeholders would buy-in hence CBJI must aggressively reach out to the practicing lawyers in the NBA to support this initiative.
Secondly, there must be accreditation of lawyers because the respondents must be who they say they are. Thirdly, the lawyers who must comment about the judges must have direct knowledge of judge’s performance and not hearsay. Furthermore, survey data must never be traceable to respondent.
Meanwhile, the NJC uses its performance evaluation reports to weed out incompetent and indolent judges from the bench.
To achieve this, the NJC has a monitoring team mandated to visit all the superior courts – Court of Appeal, Federal and state High Courts, National Industrial Court, Customary and the Shari’a Courts of Appeal – periodically to collate data on the number of civil, criminal and motions assigned each court as well as gathering data on the number of these cases disposed of and those pending at the end of each quarter.
The same NJC’s committee on performance evaluation has an empirical data bank titled ‘Nigeria’s Judicial Performance Report’ which also contain information on the performance of individual judicial officer.
Besides, the report shows the manner in which the cases were disposed of, whether they were cases decided on merit or they were struck out as non-contested cases. Judges are rated based on the cases disposed on merit.