A civil society group, Access to Justice, has said judicial service commissions responsible for the appointment of state judges have not been complying with the 2014 National Judicial Council guidelines on judges’ appointment.
Worse still, the group noted that the NJC has been turning a blind eye to the violation of its guidelines and encouraging the appointment of favoured candidates to the bench.
The Project Director, Access to Justice, Deji Ajare, stated this in Abuja on Thursday, at the public launch of a report titled ‘Making judicial appointments reform work, how the National Judicial Council can improve implementation of its judicial appointments guidelines’.
The group observed that the JSCs headed by chief judges and other judicial authorities had consistently flouted the guidelines, adding that the councils had not been providing a level playing field for all qualified persons seeking appointment as judges.
Ajare further stated that NJC’s level of oversight of the judicial selection process was too loose and indulgent to make any significant difference in the recruitment process, noting that the council had been condoning the violation of the guidelines on judges’ appointments.
The activist, a lawyer, stated, “The result is the process for selecting judges and justices of Nigeria’s superior courts of record is still opaque, unfair, and compromises merit.
“Many chief judges can still quite easily appoint their favoured candidates to high court positions and the same thing is seen in the appellate court positions too.
“Furthermore, the NJC’s current level of oversight of the judicial selection process is too loose and indulgent to make any significant difference in the recruitment process and anyone may justifiably say that the NJC is giving a free pass to the Judicial Service Commissions to do as they like with judicial appointments.
“This is clearly inconsistent with the goal of reforming Nigeria’s judiciary.”
The report cited the appointment of 25 judges into the Federal High Court in 2015 initiated by the then Chief Justice of the FHC, Ibrahim Auta, noting that there was no call for expression of interest in breach of Rule 3 of the guidelines and no advertisement of the recruitment.