The concept of the Legal Aid Council is as old as the practice of law and the concept of the judicial system itself, because right from inception, the core mandate of the Legal Aid Council is to provide free legal services to poor indigent Nigerians. The Legal Aid Council has legal practitioners who are ready to offer legal services to clients who do not have the means to engage them and pay them their professional fees.
It took some drastic and measurable terms in the late 60s and early 70s when some public-spirited lawyers decided to come together as a group even though before then, they have been handling these matters individually, rendering these services free to people who are not able to meet up with their financial obligations.
The government of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, in 1976 decided to set up a committee to look at the responsibility of setting up something like this that now became the Legal Aid Council, created in 1976, so far so good we cannot say that it has fared 100% to achieve the purposes for which the council was set up, but for purposes of that assistance, in various means and ways for which it was set up, the agency can claim to have achieved close to 80 or to about 85% of its mandate.
Its offices are open to indigent Nigerians who cannot afford justice, there are no consultation fees and when they come, they are listened to and given the options that are available. 50% of those of Nigerians who are in prison are not supposed to be in prison. The nature of our social justice system is such that a lot of people are hardened into prison without the prerequisite investigations or prerequisite explanations done by the various holding authorities.
The job of the council is not necessarily for those who are in the prisons awaiting trials, no, it entails an ordinary man on the street walking and his/ her feels their rights had been trampled upon. The issue of prison and its congestion has been a perennial problem over the years. For some of these inmates who are in prison either awaiting trials or those of them that their trials are on and their offences are bailable and therefore, there is no way they should be in prison; some of them are only there because they could not be able to meet bail conditions. This is one other problem, some of them have been granted bail, even in prisons or SARS facilities, but they have not been able to fulfil the bail conditions and therefore they are left to be lingering in the prisons.
Nobody should be in jail when he is not supposed to be in jail. There cannot be a better tragedy than to be in to prison. Some are in prison for about 6 to 7 years without going to court, so the council facilitated some of them going to court and a lot of them were granted bail by the various courts. One them that who was convicted, was instantly released from prison because he has stayed for longer years he would had served if he was convicted and sentenced to prison in the first instance.
Sometimes, especially just in the recent past, the council does Alternative Dispute Resolution, situations where you go between the parties in order to assist them settle their disputes amicably. The system is such that by the time you try to remove some people from prison, assuming you were able to get about ten or twenty people out on bail, the following day, about 50 people are taken back in prison, so it makes it a very difficult situation.
The federal government have been trying and doing something even then and now, not only in the Legal Aid Council but there are ad hoc committees; we have the Committee headed by the Chief Justice of the FCT, Justice Ishaq Bello, it is a presidential committee, it is going round the country and round various prisons trying to assess and to see how they can be able to reduce the number of people that are in prison, so it is a continuous process.
A lot of efforts are being put into the attempts to be able to decongest our prisons. For all federal government institutions, agencies and ministries, funding is a big problem, because it comes through budgetary allocations and recently, these budgetary allocations are not frequent and regular, they don’t come as at when due, but we try to manage with what we have been able to get from the government, but, fundamentally our funding comes by way of statutory allocations from the federal government.
That is why the law that established the 1976 Legal Aid Act which is the 2011 Legal Aid Act made provision for what is supposed to be called Access to Justice Fund, the fund is to assist the council in carrying out its duties which unfortunately for the council, since the law came into being in 2011 nothing has been done about that access to Justice Fund.
The Hon. Minister, the Attorney General and the Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Justice and the Council wrote a letter to the minister and graciously only last week the minister has approved that a five-man committee to bring out the modalities of establishing this Justice Fund. This access to justice fund is supposed to operate by perhaps getting donations from government, individuals and from companies, as well public-spirited individuals and institutions.
There is no federal government agency including the DSS that have the right to hold you for one week. They don’t have that authority. Perhaps unless what you have done bothers on national security and even to that extent, they are supposed to charge you to court and get a holding authority order on your person; the purpose is so that you can be able to conclude with their investigation. The situation whereby people are held for three months some, for one year without being charge is an abnormality that should not be allowed to continue and Nigerians should be aware that these things can be stopped but its only with their cooperation.
Nigerians should be aware that they can always rely on Legal Aid Council, they have a Legal Aid Centre in all the 774 LGAs in the country, that way, you can be able to bring access to justice closer to the indigent Nigerians. More than 70% of these poor indigenes are at the local level, and out of these 774 LGA’s, more than 80% of the 70% are semi-illiterates or illiterates, they don’t know anything about the law, they don’t even know that there is somebody that is going to be able to assist them when they have conflict with law enforcement agencies. So, let Nigerians be aware that they can depend on Legal Aid Council every time even for the purpose of getting legal advice. You can access the Legal Aid Office in your state or the Legal Aid Centre in your village or your LGA. Go to your local government and make a complaint because, under the Nigerian law no Nigerian is supposed to be held for a certain number of hours without being taken to court.
Mamven wrote from Abuja.
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