MANAGING director of LawPavillion, a law publishing firm, Opeyemi Olugasa, in a paper he delivered at the last year’s International Bar Association (IBA), conference held in Vienna Austria, on the topic: ‘Technology-driven judiciary will boost economy’, captured the essence of an efficient, speedy and well-coordinated judiciary for optimum dispensation of justice, when he said that ‘lawyers and judges perform efficiently and effectively when they work with the right tools, thereby contributing to national growth and development.

National growth and development, as Olugasa suggested in the paper, can only happen when the country begins to have rapid direct investments and robust industrialisation which the judiciary can guarantee when its system is stepped up and made faster to dispose cases in courts in a manner that can give investors confidence to believe in it.

But a look at Nigeria’s present judiciary from all indications, paints a gloomy picture as it is far from reaching the goals as suggested by Olugasa. The reason is perhaps, the authorities responsible for constant reforms of the system, act too slowly or not at all, thereby jeopardising the country’s early chances of attracting foreign direct investments.

As you may be aware, prompt dispute resolution and enforcement of judgments are areas of keen interest for any serious minded foreign investor.

The implication of this is that Nigeria will remain a developing country until when it is ready to operate an active, efficient and functional judicial system in order to open its borders for serious minded investors to develop the country.
There is no better time than now to carry out reforms in the judiciary that will speed up the administration of justice. Anything on the contrary will continue to keep investors away from Nigeria.

It is in this spirit Olugasa appealed to his colleagues and the Bench to assist the system to improve the justice delivery in order to attract investors.
His words: “As you may be aware, prompt dispute resolution and enforcement of judgments are areas of keen interest for any serious minded foreign investor”.

It is hoped this much needed reforms will begin to manifest to turn the fortunes of the country for the better.
To understand how things stand at the moment in the Nigerian judiciary, Dr Emilia Onyema, of SOAS, University of London, in a recent article in a national newspaper painted a picture depicting how slow Nigerian courts handle cases before them to the extent that parties sometimes are frustrated in pursuing their matters in courts.

In the article, she was referring to a case involving IPCO and NNPC which judgment arose following an arbitration hearing in which the arbitral tribunal issued a final award in October 28, 2004 in favour of IPCO.

According to her, in 2004 NNPC applied to the Federal High Court, Lagos to set aside the award on the grounds that the arbitral tribunal lacked jurisdiction and misconducted itself. The decision on this challenge is still pending or yet to be delivered following a fiasco with the now disputed report of the judge (who has now retired), which declared that the issues in the case were too complicated for her. The reassignment of the case took ten years (up to May 2015) to be resolved on appeal.

Following this decision of the Nigerian Court of Appeal, the case has now been assigned to a new judge. So since 2004 and after several applications, to 2015, a decision has not been made by the Nigerian courts. Between 2008 and 2015 there have been two discontinued criminal prosecutions and currently the third criminal prosecution for fraud and forgery privately pursued by NNPC against IPCO which are on-going in Nigeria”, she stated.

The English Court of Appeal, according to her, was heavily swayed and relied on the expert witness of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Belgore, who was the expert witness for IPCO to the effect that it was, “conceivable that there will be no fixed determination of the issue of whether the arbitral award will be set aside for twenty or thirty years or longer”.
“If we recognise that the IPCO award was rendered in 2004 and eleven years after, the award has not been enforced or set aside, it becomes understandable how and why the courts frustrate the arbitral process and retain for themselves a very poor reputation which directly impacts on the growth of the arbitration market in Nigeria. The result is the very low numbers of foreign or international arbitral references with seat in Nigeria and the reluctance of foreigners to seek enforcement of their arbitral awards in Nigeria (if they can find assets against which to enforce in other jurisdictions).

She continued: “The direct impact of this apathy and weak judicial structure is loss of income to Nigerian lawyers and the Nigerian state; the involvement of very few Nigerian lawyers and law firms in international arbitration practice; the lack of “Nigerian voices” (of Nigerian academics and judges) in international arbitration discourse. This state of affairs must change, not just for the interest of foreign investors or arbitration, but in the interest of every Nigerian citizen who has to seek legal redress before our courts”.

It is surprising that successive Nigerian governments, after assuming office, junket round the globe trying to woo foreign investors with all sorts of incentives. But it is well known fact that security of investments is important to any businessman, which is what an investor is. Part of that security, is an efficient judicial system.

Onyema stated that from 2004 to 2015 the English courts (High Court and Court of Appeal) have given five judgments on IPCO v NNPC. Over the same period, the Nigerian courts have not made one final decision on the same dispute except the one by the Federal High Court judge earlier mentioned. This to her, does not augur well for the reputation of the Nigerian judiciary which one English judge in IPCO v NNPC described as “catastrophic”.

To her, it is surprising that successive Nigerian governments, after assuming office, junket round the globe trying to woo foreign investors with all sorts of incentives. But it is well known fact that security of investments is important to any businessman, which is what an investor is.

Part of that security, she argued, is an efficient judicial system. “Efficiency implies access to and speed of obtaining justice in addition to substantive justice. It is no use telling investors, ‘oh you can arbitrate your disputes in Nigeria,’ only for them to end up being frustrated by the Nigerian court system after going through arbitration. Arbitration will get you a decision in good time but it will not transform the paper on which the decision is written into money – it is the courts that need to do that.
This is why an efficient arbitral system requires an equally efficient judicial system to thrive. ‘The Nigerian judicial system clearly is broken and no longer fit for purpose. It needs a major overhaul to provide the support arbitration in Nigeria desperately needs’.

This case cited by Onyema is one in a million that are still pending in Nigeian courts for several years. In some cases the parties don’t live to see the end or the final outcome of their suits. Others out of frustration abandon theirs and resort to self-help to settle their matters in a manner that defeats the essence for the establishment of the courts which are still regarded as the last hope of the common man. But it is clear, this hope can only be realised if there is speedy process of dispensation of justice, as justice delayed is equal to justice denied.