Senior lawyers have called for stronger measures to confront delays in Nigerian courts as the judiciary enters a new legal year.
Their position is that delay should no longer be treated as an unavoidable feature of litigation but as a justice-administration problem capable of being addressed through active judicial case management.
One proposal is for courts to award meaningful costs where lawyers or litigants employ tactics that unnecessarily prolong proceedings.
Such sanctions, they argue, would discourage frivolous adjournment applications and encourage counsel to prepare cases before appearing in court.
The lawyers also want judges to exercise greater control over their cause lists and ensure proceedings begin more predictably.
Uncertainty over court sittings can impose substantial costs on litigants and lawyers, particularly where people travel long distances only to discover that matters will not proceed.
Digitalisation is another central recommendation.
Electronic filing, digital service of processes, electronic cause lists and reliable recording of proceedings could reduce dependence on manual registries and make case management easier.
The lawyers also emphasised the importance of judicial independence, arguing that efficiency cannot be separated from adequate funding, infrastructure and institutional autonomy.
Nigeria has repeatedly acknowledged its case-backlog problem.
Recent reform discussions have included mandatory pre-trial case management and proposals designed to prevent lengthy trials from beginning afresh merely because a presiding judge has been elevated or transferred.
For lawyers advocating reform, however, the practical test is simple: how long does an average litigant wait before obtaining a final decision?
They argue that future judicial performance should increasingly be evaluated against measurable outcomes—including the age of pending cases, frequency of adjournments and time required to deliver judgments.
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News Source: Daily Independent
