Newly-confirmed Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kayode Ariwoola has spoken on the controversy which enveloped the Supreme Court of Nigeria during the tenure of immediate past CJN Tanko Muhammad.
The Quest Times reports that 14 justices of the Supreme Court in a letter in June 2022, addressed to then CJN Muhammad, expressed their grievances over certain range of issues affecting the Court. The Justices in their letter raised several complaints ranging from failure to access training funds to lack of accommodation for Judges.
Speaking on the issue prior to his Senate confirmation hearing at the National Assembly on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, CJN Ariwoola who was the most senior of the Justices revealed that there was never a petition against Tanko Muhammad, as they had no issues with him.
According to Ariwoola, the Justices simply wrote a letter detailing the issues affecting the Court. He further stated that they had no hand in the leaking of the letter to the public.
“The 14 of us wrote and delivered by hand to our brother, the past CJN. How it got to the newspapers, we do not know. We had no problems with our number one.
“There was no petition against the CJN, we were not protesting, we only put our complaints on paper to our brother,” he said.
On funding of the judiciary, Ariwoola said it must be funded, saying that judges should not been seen as begging. He urged the senate to always give expeditious approval to budgets of the judiciary to enable it discharge its duties.
He, however, added that it was his utmost desire to introduce technology into the operations of the nation’s judicial system.
He also said machinery had been put in place to amend the rules and procedures of courts to ensure improved operations of their processes.
He said there was the need to also appoint more judges to facilitate speedy dispensation of cases, while also advocating that final judgements on some cases should be made to end at the appeal courts.