 Governors in the south-west geo-political zone have proposed decentralisation of the Supreme Court in the ongoing amendments to the 1999 constitution by the National Assembly. In the memorandum, through the south-west caucus in the federal parliament, the governors are seeking the establishment of six more apex courts, one in each geo-political zone. Nigeria, as we know presently, has one Supreme Court sitting in Abuja, the federal capital territory, which handles all the cases from the Court of Appeal. The proposed amendment will not only decentralise the apex court, but also legalise the authority of the Chief Justice of Nigeria over the courts in the country. Joining us to discuss this is Shina Faguero. He is a legal practitioner, and of course, Biyadu Shomi, who is a political analyst. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Can you hear me? Please unmute yourself. Thank you very much for having me. Great, great, great. So I'm going to start with you, Shina, because you are a lawyer. This on the surface does really sound like a novell idea if it were to be taken up, but does this in reality work if the governors are proposing for it to be done, and then if the National Assembly were to take it up as a bill and push it? What good will it do for our justice system in the country? Well, you know, in terms of decentralising the justice system and reducing the top law and the apex courts, right, will also in a state-based country where we have seen the negative effects of over-centralisation in a pluralistic society. And it all goes within the grain of stronghold. Before the 1963 constitution was suspended by the military, each region had its own supreme court, and there was a limit to what the federal supreme courts could advocate over. And I think this is the reason why, part of the reason why, you know, governors have proposed this, and it is aligned with that, you know, the articulate responsibility of the year means to the people of the south that need a bit more expression within the Nigerian federation. The centralisation, the centralisation of the Nigerian federation has become stifling, it's standing in the executive, it's stifling the legislature, and it's stifling the judiciary. But however, in terms of the practicality of the dimension, I would like the government to also consider a number of other things. Mr Fagwari, I'm sorry, we're having connection issues, so we're going to have to hold on. We can't really hear you, we're having connection problems, Mr Fagwari. So it's difficult for us to comprehend what you're saying. So we'll come back to you when we're able to fix that. To you, Mr Choumi, why do you think that this is stemming from? Because first governors were asking for something that made it seem like they were looking for regional government all over again, and this is not the first time we're hearing something in this regard. But now they're talking about, you know, zoning these courts into different regions. Why do you think that the governors are advocating for this? Taking to consideration, one is the administration of justice, and the second one is the dispensation of justice. And the fourth systems, it is an anomaly, you know, for a federal system of government, you know, to have a centralized judicial system of government, because for the size of Nigeria and its composition, it is almost an anomaly, you know, to have a centralized judicial system. So what the governors are trying to do now is they're looking at two issues. They've never had issues with the administration of criminal justice, but the issue is about dispensation. You know, when you have a situation where people need to go to Abuja in order to, you know, appeal a case up to Supreme Court, it does not work well. In some cases, the cost of, you know, assessing the Supreme Court is so prohibitive that many people tend to abandon, you know, those cases, even when they stand a good chance of winning a court. And that is not giving the dispensation of justice. The other factor is the fact that when you have a centralized system of government and you have a decentralized, you know, functions in terms of the criminal justice system, where the states have exclusive preserve on some, particularly on the PENACO, on some issues. And you also have the law saying clearly that there must be issue of territorial jurisdiction. So where you have issues of territorial jurisdiction, you know, applying at the high court level, why should it be different, you know, at the Supreme Court level? Why must a case involving, you know, an incident that happened, for instance, in Southwest, you know, be resolved at the Supreme Court level in Abuja? So these are some of the issues which the governors are looking at, apart from practicing through federalism, that add to your quick dispensation of justice. And currently, a case in Supreme Court takes about five to seven years from what many people have said, you know, to get resolved. You know, that's justice delay. We don't need that. We need a quick dispensation of justice. So it's important that the criminal justice system in Nigeria, you know, be re-think, which is what the governors are calling for, in a way to ensure that the administration of, there is the ease of administration of justice, and there is quick dispensation of justice in all matters, affecting the public. It also makes mention of the fact that it should empower the attorney general of the federation. Does this mean that the attorney general was not empowered in the first instance? Was his position more of a ceremonial one? Yes, we've seen the Confucian from time to time. When it comes to justice, anybody presiding over dispensation of justice or his administration must be seen to be impartial in all undertake. What we have currently is that we have two offices combining to one, that is the Office of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice. The Minister of Justice is a political appointment made by the president of the country, who in any case is partisan. Quite often, he's only members of a particular party or ruling party that appointed, you know, as attorney general. In the case of, no, sorry, as Minister of Justice, in the case of Attorney General, this should be a professional office for a lawyer, you know, to administer and preside over the dispensation of justice. It is the role that you can say the director of public prosecution and commissioner for justice. There should be two different roles. You can't expect a partisan minister of justice, you know, to also administer the Office of Attorney General to preside over it. What quite often happens is you tend to have confusion, you have the Attorney General being called into question, you know, being a case of partisanship, as we've seen in the case of the current Attorney General Malami, at times the role is so confusing at what stage will it cross from your partisan belief, at what stage will it affect your professional job. So we've seen so many examples of this that many people point and accuse the Attorney General and who is also the Minister of Justice of being partial in some cases. So we really need to rethink it in a way to ensure that we can protect the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, you know, from partisan considerations, while at the same time, you know, make sure that the Minister of Justice, who is a criminal appointee, could also function in that role, you know, as the Minister of Justice. So I think it's a very good development. We need to separate the many countries practicing democracies, do not have them fierce together like to be the nitrope. So I think that would be a good development. All right. Mr. Fabriero seems to be back. Let's go back to what you were saying. Mr. Fabriero, the last guest just said that, you know, it's a great thing to be able to separate the duties of the Attorney General of the Federation and of course other issues, especially the fact that, you know, he's a political appointee. But let's look at the fact that we say that we are a federal government and we are running on a unitary system of governments of sorts and our Constitution seems to be all over the place. So introducing this into the Constitution, what system of government does that now amount to, because we seem to be all over the place in terms of our system of government? Well, it's curious. You're very correct by saying that our Constitution is all over the place. It is all over the place because in the first place, it's not fit for purpose. The issue of the Attorney General and the Minister for Justice, clearly my brother, the speaker who spoke before me, is absolutely right. I think the Attorney General's position is strictly professional. As a matter of fact, the Attorney General should have the powers to be able to institute prosecution against anyone in government without the prompting of the disturbance of the President or anyone in the Executive. The Minister for Justice, on the other hand, has the responsibility to relay the government's justice agenda. You know, and these things used to be the case. Take, for example, prior to 1966, when the 1963 Constitution was abrogated, you had the director of public prosecution and the director of public prosecution was actually the apex prosecuting officer in the regions then. And it was well independent of government. It was well independent of government in power. But as I was saying before, I got caught off by my wife, you know, the wife I think, the last time. This time around, there are certain things I would need to, that I would hope we will see before the implementation of either having decentralized Supreme Courts or separation of the offices of the Attorney General from the Minister for Justice. For us to be truly qualified to be a federation, the states or the federal units themselves must have constitutions. That is the major and the fundamental flaw of a federation right now. But states already have laws and ethics and acts. I mean, so why do they need to have a full blown constitution? Yeah, I do agree. They have laws and ethics and acts. But you can't have specific written law for the federation. And then the state laws are all over the place. Okay, let them consolidate them into a law. Let them consolidate them into a constitution. Because what a constitution should do, should be able to define rules for the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. How they be governance, that is how they are elected and how they are made accountable. For example, in the judiciary now, you have a double accountability on the side of judges. And it's part of the mess that our constitution is in. So what I mean is that when we had, there is no federation on earth, except Nigeria, that has its federation units not having a constitution. When we were through federation prior to 1966, January 15, or whenever they decided to suspend the constitution, each of the regions had its constitution. And that constitution provided for judiciary, including a supreme chief justice. Okay. But it also provided for relationships between the regions and the federation. But the point we are trying to drive at here, the issue of separation for justice, minister for justice and attorney general is a question of equity and justice. And in closing, because we're running out of time, we're talking about equity and justice, can we find it? Or is this just a starting point? Is this the road to getting that equity and justice or fair play? If this becomes a bill that is passed in too long? Well, development is a brick by brick. It's a building block by building block. We learn and then we make mistakes and then we correct them and then we go on. Life is not static. So the point is that where we have made a mistake is where we see the problem and we are not responsive to the problem. This particular constitution that we sit on in Nigeria now is predicated on certain factors that will make us fail as a federation and will also even make us fail as a central government. So it doesn't go either here or there. So constitutional amendment is fine, restructuring fine. For me, there's a lot of sentimentics there. The fundamental part is that we must do something. Okay. All right. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for being part of the conversation. Unfortunately, time is not our friend. Biorgo Chouwami is a political analyst and Shino Faguero is a legal practitioner. Thank you so much for shedding light on this issue. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you all for being part of the conversation. I will see you tomorrow on Plus Politics. I am Mary Anna Cohen. Have a good evening.