Legal experts at the Justice Aderemi Annual Lecture Series (JAALS) Foundation have renewed calls for urgent reforms in Nigeria’s justice system. They identified institutional synergy, political will, and technology adoption as vital to restoring efficiency and fairness in justice delivery.

This was the consensus at the JAALS Virtual Justice Reform Roundtable held with the theme, “Strengthening Institutional Synergy: A Catalyst for Effective Justice Delivery?”

The session, moderated by JAALS convener, Dr Tolu Aderemi, gathered legal experts, law enforcement officials, policymakers, and civic leaders to discuss solutions to the justice sector’s challenges.

Delivering the keynote address, former EFCC Chairman, Mr Abdulrasheed Bawa, highlighted weak collaboration, institutional rivalry, and fragmented data as the system’s greatest hindrances.

He outlined five pillars of synergy- political will, inter-agency collaboration, improved communication, capacity building, and community involvement, insisting that “justice cannot thrive where agencies work in isolation.”

Citing the Chain Analysis report, Bawa revealed that Nigeria recorded $75 billion in crypto transactions between July 2024 and June 2025, much of which was used for money laundering.

He warned that without joint training, shared resources, and a unified digital case management system, the justice sector would remain behind the sophistication of modern crime.

The former Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, CSP Fatai Owoseni, traced the breakdown of inter-agency collaboration to decades of legislative overlap and rivalry.

He recalled that in the 1980s, security agencies operated seamlessly through a Joint Force Headquarters that shared intelligence and coordinated operations.

“Justice is the bedrock of democracy; when it is lacking, social order collapses. Justice delayed is justice denied,” he stressed. He proposed a Justice Management System linking arrests, investigations, and prosecutions and urged holistic, well-funded reforms devoid of agency bias.

The Head of the Legal Unit of the ICPC in Lagos, Yvonne Williams Mbata, commended JAALS for creating the dialogue platform and urged that it become a yearly forum for accountability. She called for digital court integration and decentralisation of the Supreme Court to reduce delays.

“Synergy is essential if we want to improve our judicial system. Only visible, constant results can restore public trust,” she said.

In his remarks, Dr Aderemi urged a paradigm shift in Nigeria’s justice priorities, citing Operation Burst in Oyo State under Governor Ajimobi as proof that synergy restores order. He described the Kogi institutional clash as a “monumental embarrassment” and called for a review of Section 308, which shields certain officials from prosecution.

He also urged reabsorbing retired judges for election tribunals and improving officers’ welfare. Participants in the end reaffirmed that synergy was indispensable and condemned corruption and data fragmentation.

They called for the creation of an inter-agency justice coordination mechanism. JAALS Country Representative, Kelvin Ekoro, restated the Foundation’s mission to bridge the gap between government and citizens, and promote a justice system anchored on innovation, rehabilitation and fairness.