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The Nigerian Bar Association’s President, Yakubu Maikyau (SAN), has urged the Federal Government to make deliberate investments in the welfare of judges and justices in the country to improve the dispensation of justice.
Maikyau made the call on Monday when he delivered an address at the Annual Legal Year ceremony of the Court of Appeal, held at the Court of Appeal Headquarters, Abuja.
In attendance at the event was the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice M.B. Dongban-Mensem, as well as other eminent jurists and members of the bar.
The NBA President, in his address, decried the poor working condition of the court and the welfare of the justices.
He stated that the salaries and allowances of judges and justices in the country have remained the same since 2008, noting that this hurts justice and justice delivery in the country.
Maikyau also stressed the need for the judiciary to be truly independent and described as worrisome the fact that “None of the presidential candidates for the 2023 election, who attended the opening ceremony of the just-concluded NBA-AGC on August 21, 2022, spared any thought on the independence of the judiciary.”
He called on the Federal Government to revisit the 2018 Report of the Committee on the Review of Judicial Salaries and Conditions of Service to align it with present-day realities and give effect to the final recommendations that will arise therefrom.
Maikyau said, “Our nation is plagued by several challenges: insecurity, economic crises, political instability, and corruption. These are clear manifestations of the absence of justice in our society.
“The legal profession (the bench and bar) has been rendered incapable of dispensing its primary responsibility to the people, the promotion of the rule of law to serve the cause of justice. Several actions of the government undermine the work of the judiciary in this regard.”
“I noted in my inaugural address that the fact that an action had to be filed in court to compel the government to look into and improve the welfare of judges and justices is sufficient reason to conclude that there is a deliberate ploy to emasculate and pauperise the courts, thereby strangling the course of justice in this nation.”
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