Lagos lawyer and civil rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) has lamented what he described as the high cost of justice in Nigeria stressing that it has made it difficult for poor citizens to have access to justice.
Falana, made the observation while delivering a lecture during the launch of the Annual Law Journal of the Law Students' Society, University of Ilorin, The Jurist, in honour of Mrs. Folake Solanke, the first female Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
In the lecture, entitled, "The Anti-Corruption War in the Nigerian Judiciary: How Far? How Well?," Falana noted that apart from the fact that the common man are economically disabled from having access to the court, the Constitution, he noted has ousted the jurisdiction of the court to adjudicate on the provisions of the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principle of the State Policy which have guaranteed the socio-economic rights of the Nigerian people.
"No doubt the Judiciary has contributed to the protection of political and civil rights but as such rights are meaningless to the majority of the poor and disadvantaged citizens, the courts should use their judicial powers to defend and promote socio-economic rights."
He added that if Nigerian judges are not prepared to re-invent the wheel like their Indian counterparts had done by making socio-economic rights justiciable through judicial activism, they should be prepared to discard the reactionary doctrine of locus standi in order to allow public interest litigators to enforce the welfare laws that have been enacted by the Parliament.
He stressed that these laws are now being breached with impunity by the government.
He commended Justice Mukhtar for repositioning the National Judicial Council to take up the urgent task of restoring confidence in the judiciary, expressing his optimism that heads of the various courts and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) would monitor and drive the reform agenda of the CJN in order to restore the confidence of the Nigerian people in the courts.
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