Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), has warned that it would be dangerous for the bodies vested with the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court to wait longer to fill the vacancies.
He lamented that the number of justices reduced to just 10 was uncomfortable and wondered why the bodies that should fill the vacancies had waited until now.
The law provides that the Supreme Court should have a full complement of 21 justices drawn from across the six geopolitical zones for proper representation.
He lamented that even though there was a process on, the wheel of the process was too slow and should be expidited.
He said he had personally reminded some of his colleagues in the appointing bodies to do something fast and avert a crisis that might arise from the lean bench.
Falana spoke on Friday morning in reaction to the valedictory speech of a Supreme Court justice, Musa Dattijo Mohammad who retired last week and lamented that the bench was no longer representative of the inclusion envisaged in the law in respect of the court‘s bench.
Justice Mohammad had in his valedictory questioned why a zone such as the South East had been reduced to zero representation at the Supreme Court for well over two years.
He said the delay in replacing two justices from the zone who died over two years ago was a deliberate policy until a third justice from the zone died in July this year.
He also disclosed that with his retirement last week, his north-central geopolitical zone was also reduced to zero representation.
The SAN who spoke on Channels TV discussion said “It is a matter of law and equity that all geopolitical zones of Nigeria are represented at the Supreme Court bench, and the process should be fastened to bridge that gap because if we wait longer it might raise constitutional crisis.”
Falana, however, noted that even though it was apt for retiring justices to raise such issues, the timing wasn’t right.
He challenged judges and members of the bench and other important public service offices not to wait until the day they retired to point out things that were not done right.
He encouraged judges still in service to find the appropriate channels to raise issues about things that are going wrong.
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