Access to Justice faults judicial appointment exercise in Abia State

The Access to Justice (A2J) a non-profit organisation has demanded the cancellation of the 2022 judicial appointment exercise in Abia State for breaching the National Judicial Council (NJC) Guidelines for Judicial Appointment.

Daily Trust recalls that in 2021, A2J had made a similar petition, after allegations that the judicial selection process by the Abia State Judicial Service Commission (JSC) was marred by corruption, and that a chief magistrate slumped and died over reports that her name was not included in the NJC final list after she had borrowed funds to pay bribes for that purpose which forced the JSC to cancel the judicial selection exercise.

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A2J said the 2022 recruitment process is likely flawed like the 2021 process, although the exercise was cancelled and as such has petitioned the CJN alleging that the Abia State JSC has used crooked tactics to manipulate the outcomes of the judicial selection exercise in the state. 

The Senior Programme Officer, Chinelo Chinweze, said “our petition claims that the shortlist of candidates which the Abia State JSC sent to the NJC was contrived, being different from the shortlist of candidates presented to stakeholders in the course of the judicial selection process, and which the Abia State JSC used as the basis for inviting the input of those stakeholders – specifically the Abia State Branches of the Nigerian Bar Association.”