Al-makra made the call on Tuesday in Lafia during the 31st Annual National Conference of Judges of Federal High Courts. The governor said his call became necessary because judges ‘’represent the anchor on which the ship of democracy rests”. He said that the cardinal functions of the court were not only the creation of access to justice, but also engendering a society where all men were equal in status before the law. “It is only in a situation where people can freely approach the court and obtain fair judgment that peace and justice will reign,” he said Al-makura stressed the need for the courts to be seen as fountain of justice in which the entire society looked up to with reverence and respect. He said that no nation could make any appreciable progress without total commitment to the ground rules and adherence to due process. According to him, the rule of law is the life wire of any nation as it guarantees peace, justice, order and good governance, which are the hallmarks of democracy. Al-Makura urged the judges to take critical look at the excesses and activities of the social media, which he said needed to be controlled. “I wish to draw the attention of this important Conference to the need for all of us to address the excesses going on in the social media. ‘’It is sad that the social media, which has become an obsession in today’s society, is threatening individual liberty and due process in the dispensation of justice. “Miscreants have found the social media a cheap platform for blackmail, mischief and falsehood. ‘’Even the justice system is not safe from the snare of campaigns of calumny being perpetrated under this genre of mass communication,” he said. Speaking earlier, Justice Ibrahim Auta, Chief Judge of the Federal High Court of Nigeria, said that the court had been the practice for the Court to meet annually, to appraise activities of the previous year. ’This is with a view to finding solutions to identified problems,” he said. According to him, plans have almost been concluded for the engagement of 20 Federal High Court judges. He said that the effort was to enable each state of the federation have at least two judges on the bench of the court. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that about 30 Federal High Court judges attended the occasion]]>