Despite Justice Tanko Muhammad’s resignation as Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), the Senate has decided to keep looking into the Supreme Court’s situation.
The resolution was passed by lawmakers in the National Assembly’s upper house on Tuesday at a plenary session in response to a proposal submitted by Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, and Legal Matters.
Concerns over the poor welfare circumstances and challenging work environment in the supreme court were expressed by Supreme Court justices in a petition to the recently-departed CJN.
Days after the occurrence, Justice Muhammad, the CJN, announced his resignation due to illness; his term in office was supposed to run until 2023.
President Muhammadu Buhari swore in Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, the senior justice of the supreme court, as acting CJN barely a few hours after Muhammad tendered his resignation.
In his remarks to his colleagues during Tuesday’s plenary, Senator Bamidele, who moved the motion by citing Orders 41 and 51, called the Senate’s attention to the assignment handed to the committee at the previous plenary, which related to the Supreme Court’s current state of affairs.
The committee was directed by the Senate in its resolution to carry out its task in the search for a long-lasting solution by collaborating with relevant stakeholders to examine the concerns stated in the petition by the justices.
Additionally, it instructed the committee to communicate with pertinent parties in the three arms of government as well as other parties to gather opinions and viewpoints on the short-, medium-, and long-term actions required to effectively handle the judiciary’s dilemma.
The legislators defined this to include both the immediate fiscal interventions and the long-term and sustainable budgetary allocations necessary for the judiciary’s best operations in accordance with international best practices.
