Federal high court to appoint 20 additional judges

Accordingly, it added that the additional judges would make it possible for every state of the federa­tion, including Nasarawa State, to have at least two judges on the bench of the court. Chief judge of the high court, Justice Ibrahim Ndahi Auta, disclosed this in his opening speech at the 31st annual federal high court judges’ conference held in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital. He recalled that the court which started as a small court in 1973, when it was operating just from one division in Lagos with only five judges, now has 36 operational divisions with 53 serving judges. Shedding light on the conference, Justice Auta said: “It has been the prac­tice of the federal high court to meet annually to appraise the activities of the previous year with a view to finding a solution to identified problems. “In the process of find­ing solution to the indenti­fied problems, the judges freely correct and appor­tion blames to their erring brother-judges before final­ly urging them to improve on their performances in the previous year,” he ex­plained. Justice Auta concluded that the objective of the conference was to iden­tify ways of moving the court forward by discuss­ing problems as well as ac­quainting themselves with current developments in their chosen profession. When declaring the con­ference open, Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa State drew at­tention of the participants to the need to address the excesses of the social me­dia. According to the gov­ernor, “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.” He stated that even the justice system is not safe from the snare of cam­paigns of calumny perpe­trated under this genre of mass communication. Al-Makura therefore want the judiciary, an in­stitution anchored on in­tegrity, to intervene in the unwholesome dissemina­tion of falsehood so as to restore sanity in the soci­ety.]]>