The Federal Ministry of Justice’s plans to institute a “people-centred justice” approach through reforms of the justice system may bring Nigeria into the global best practices.
The concept of people-centred justice has been at the centre of the campaigns by some international justice delivery organisations like the World Justice Project (WJP) and the Hague Institute for Innovative Law (HiiL) as a means of addressing social inequalities and injustice in the world.
Announcing plans for the reform on April 11, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), said a justice reform summit to make the Nigerian justice system more people-centred tagged National Justice Reform Summit would be inaugurated by President Bola Tinubu.
Fagbemi said the summit will be conducted in collaboration with the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and the National Judicial Council (NJC) and will be held at the auditorium of the National Judicial Institute in Abuja on April 24 and 25, with the theme, “Repositioning the Justice System: Constitutional, Statutory and Operational Reforms for Access and Efficiency.”
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He said, “The National Summit on Justice presents a unique opportunity to collectively tackle the pressing issues hindering the efficient, fair, and people-centred delivery of justice in our nation.”
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) describes “people-centred justice” as a situation where “all people have equal access to justice that meets their needs, provided by systems that are inclusive, responsive, effective, and consistent with human rights norms and standards; in which states understand common and informal justice (CIJ) systems as playing a central role in people-centred justice and the rule of law.”
Some elements of this approach include alternative dispute resolution, access to courts, and equality before the law.
WJP has indicated that a growing number of governments, donors, and communities are embracing a paradigm shift to people-centred justice as a global movement that prioritises identifying people’s legal needs and fostering accessible solutions to address them, rather than primarily investing in established institutions that are missing the mark.
In its study in 2019, the organisation found that some five billion around the world were battling with unmet justice needs, which negates the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG 16), and policymakers are increasingly eyeing the role that customary and informal justice (CIJ) plays in addressing everyday needs.
The data shows that many people face justice problems, and too few get the justice they need. In addition, it submits that this “justice gap” undermines human development, reinforces the poverty trap, and imposes high societal costs.
Thus, closing the justice gap “is vital to realising the broader development agenda and its vision of a just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met.”
A breakdown of the WJP finding, which could resonate in Nigeria, indicates that in 2019, there were 1.5 billion people who could not obtain justice for civil, administrative, or criminal justice problems, 4.5 billion who were not excluded from the opportunities the law provides and 253 million people who live in extreme conditions of injustice, including people who are stateless, victims of modern slavery, and people who live in fragile states with high levels of insecurity.
“When viewed in the aggregate, these figures amount to 5.1 billion people – or approximately two-thirds of the world’s population – who face at least one of these justice issues, with many confronted by multiple injustices. While this aggregate estimate certainly demonstrates unacceptable levels of exclusion from justice, the justice gap assessment aims to go beyond this high-level figure and serve as the first step to better understand the multifaceted and overlapping forms of injustice that people face,” the report revealed.
Similarly, the Chief Executive Officer of HiiL, Sam Muller, disclosed during the presentation of the organisation’s 2023 report on the justice needs and satisfaction in Nigeria said a lot of gaps needed to be covered.
“Two-thirds of people on planet Earth do not have adequate access to justice, and somehow it is not getting better and we keep doing the same thing to improve,” he said.
The HiiL data shows that 81 per cent of Nigerians encountered a legal problem in 2023, one-third said the cases are still ongoing, while 82 per cent of them considered the resolution fair or very fair.
Nigeria’s paradigm shift through the justice-centred focus may spur greater accountability and justice in the society.