‘E-filing requires amendment in Lagos State judiciary’

A Lagos based lawyer, Mr Oluwole Kehinde has said the e-filing process in the Lagos Judiciary requires amendment.He made this known in an interview with The Guardian. According to him, the present e-filing process is not only cumbersome but also causing a lot of delay.

This, he said, is as a result of gross infrastructural deficit in ICT in the judiciary, which gives room for indolence and nonchalance on the part of the staff and the consequent pressure on litigants to succumb to offering gratification to advance their matters.

“With that process, today a litigant can hardly obtain interim order for preservation of property or personal rights in Lagos State. It is either there is no network to upload scanned processes or they are unable to generate temporary or permanent suit number, without which a case cannot progress. The situation is far from satisfactory, as it is unreasonably tedious,” he declared.

Kehinde further stated that there is need for Lagos judiciary to ‎improve on the fast-track system. He therefore suggested amendment in the general application of  the pre-action protocol rule, particularly Order 3 Rule 11, which empowers the Registry to screen cases for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and refer appropriate cases to the Multidoor Court House or other ADR institutions for which the litigant is financially liable.

“It is a great obstacle to the free exercise of right of access to court. In jurisdictions where such rules have been justified, the litigant is not obliged to pay for the cost of alternative dispute resolution should his case be referred thereto,” he stated.