Surely, there are ways in which service provisionthe Supreme Court provides service and, yes, were all customersby the Supreme Court can improve from the present intolerable situation. Better use of information technology is one. Information Technology is not an enemy of judicial independence. Consider the amount of precious time (not to mention travel risk) that lawyers, (senior and junior) undertake when they travel the considerable distances to Abuja only to find out on the day that a case is not taking place.In this era of e-mails and sms, how can we tolerate this and senior lawyers keep quiet about it and our profession is also silent about it like its normal and clients have to bear the costs for a system not designed for service provision' The nomalisation of abnormality is not normal. Has any of you tried to use the website of the Supreme Court for anything - www.scn.gov.ng' Can you please try and lets know what you get after the landing page'I suspect most people dont even know the Supreme Court has a website and it may still be news for Justices of the Supreme Court. Many other Supreme Courts have moved into the 21st Century. Decisions of the apex courts of most countries in Southern Africa are available - open source - at the click of a button.The Southern African Legal Information Institute has a partnership with them that makes this possible. So if you want decisions of the Zambian Supreme Court, for instance, you simply go to http://www.saflii.org/zm/cases/ZMSC/ Pronto! Youre there. The Kenyan judiciary has an integrated web-site www.judiciary.go.ke. Take a look and see what it provides for users of the court systems. Cases are no longer assigned manually in Kenya. Its electronic.It is software controlled. Under its current Chief Justice, Willy Mutunga, SC, it has articulated a clear mission and asks Kenyans to assess judicial service provision with reference to this. Guess what its vision is' To be an independent and accessible provider of quality justice to all. What is the vision of or for the Nigerian judiciary. And what about the mission of the Kenya judiciary' To provide an independent, accessible, responsive forum for the just resolution of disputes in order to preserve the rule of law and to protect all rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of Kenya.The world is making progress. Do we want to move along' Or take the size of our Supreme Court. Establishment size is 21. Now we have 14. That is a court operating at two-thirds of installed capacity. What is the reason why the Supreme Court cant have its full complement of 21 Justices'Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, 32, Amazon Street, Maitama, Abuja.
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