Insufficient judges in Kano State has been described as one of the major reasons behind the delay in the establishment of designated courts and judges to rule over Sexual and Gender Based Violence cases in the state.
This was disclosed by the Chief Judge of the state, Justice Nura Sagir during a dissemination meeting held in Kano that was organized by the Rule of Law and Anti-corruption programme with funding from the European Union and implemented by the British Council.
According to the judge, plans have already begun to establish the designated courts but the state is currently constrained due to the insufficient numbers of judges in the state.
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“Some states have specialized courts for SGBV cases but at the moment we don’t have that in Kano because of the number of judges in the state. We currently have 19 judges and have thousands of cases ranging from civil, criminal, fundamental and enforcement cases among others to be tried.
“But recently, the NJC has given us permission to appoint about nine more judges in which the process has begun and we hope that once we get the additional judges we will be able to designate high courts to entertain SGBV cases,” he said.
Justice Sagir also dropped hint on plans to increase number of small claims courts from 5 to 12 in the state to enable persons with small businesses access to the courts to get speedy trials.
In her presentation, the RoLAC Component 2 and 4 Lead, Mrs Oluwatoyosi Giwa stated that the state has the highest number of SGBV against boys under 18 based on reports from the Sexual Assault Referral Centres, SARC when compared to other centres.
“We have 32 SARCs across 19 states and Kano has the highest number of SGBV against boys who are under the age of 18 years,” the Component Lead noted.
She further said that barely 3 months after launching the Sexual Offenders Register database in June 2022, the state has recorded 34 cases out of which it got 29 convictions and efforts were in top gear to upload backlogs of cases on the register.
On his part, the RoLAC National Programme Manager, Danlami Plang said it has succeeded in breaking the culture of silence going by the increase in the level of reportage of SGBV cases with the setting up of Sexual Assault Referral Centres, adding that the programme had intervened in various aspects in the state which he said had yielded positive results.
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