The Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Kazeem Alogba, has said Nigerians are complaining about the administration of justice in the country, noting that it’s the reason for the constant attack on the legal profession.
Justice Alogba stated this on Tuesday at the Ikeja State High Court where he hosted a cocktail party to kick start the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law Annual Conference 2023 slated for June 23.
He reiterated that the judiciary was not doing enough, calling on judges in the country to deliberate and ask themselves where they went wrong.
Speaking on the theme of the conference, “Post-election Nigeria: The judiciary in the eye of the storm,” the judge said that the legal profession ought to be doing better, adding that it had to bring back the good old days with newer specialties. .
He said, “These people are complaining about everybody concerned with administration of justice. These are the orders that have a statutory duty to dispense justice in their different spheres and if they choose not to burn hospitals, government houses but courts, police stations, and correctional facilities centres, then they are complaining about the administration of justice.
“What we should ask ourselves is, are they justified, do they have any justification for doing so, I think so. The justification might be right or wrong but as they did then, they still do today to complain about the administration of justice in the country. We are not doing enough.”
He further stated that the bar and the bench had a duty to take responsibility to make people understand how they work and not to misrepresent themselves to people.
The NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau, SAN, who also spoke at the event, stated that the absence of justice had threatened the existence of Nigeria.
Maikyau said that their responsibilities and primary call to do justice was fundamental to the nation’s existence.
He stated, “If we find or see anything that threatens our existence as a nation or as a people, don’t go any further searching for what it is, it is simply the absence of justice.
“Is it the insecurity, is it the economic growth that we are not experiencing the way we should, all the numerous issues that we are experiencing in this nation are the function of the absence of justice. What we do at the bench and what we also do as members of the bar are all geared towards achieving the same objectives and it is the objectives that bind all of us not only as professionals but also as a people because the existence of this and our existence as a people clearly depends on justice.’’
