Godwin Irikefe
May 4, 2015 – Access to Justice has called on the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria(JUSON) to call off the nationwide strike embarked upon since January to press home demands for financial autonomy for the judiciary.
JUSON had obtained judgement granting it financial autonomy but most of the states including the Federal Government have refused to implement the judgement.
In a statement signed by its Executive Director, Mr. Joseph Otteh and Senior Programme Officer, Chinelo Chinweze, the group said the strike has had a far reaching impact on the nation.
“Access to Justice appeals to JUSUN to consider calling off the strike action at this time. We do this for two principal reasons: first, the impact of the strike has been massive, and has had the most disproportionate effect on persons who are mostly “outsiders” to the policy making circuit and who exercise little or no influence over policy makers who alone can address the grievances being expressed by JUSUN in the sustained strike.
“Second, there will be considerable changes to the composition of the executive branch in a significant number of States where the strike is taking place soon. Newly elected Governors will be sworn into office in some of these States on May 29 2015, which is barely a month from this time.
“This is the situation in States like Kaduna, Enugu, Plateau, Taraba and Nasarawa States, among others. The in-coming administrations could pursue a different policy from those being currently applied by the current group of incumbencies, and could very well differ on policies relating to compliance with the Justice Ademola Judgment. But coming into office and meeting a pre-existing and on-going strike action that has effectively crippled the operations of a vital branch of government will not represent a healthy inheritance, nor a good start to the business of governance. In this instance, it appears to be more meaningful that new governments begin on a clean slate and have the space and opportunity to articulate their own policies as well as correct past policies that have created obstacles to good governance”, the group noted.
It called on the union to consider the case of those who are blighted the most by the strike – “the “innocent” third parties: there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of people who are languishing in detention, in police and prison cells because their cases cannot be processed by courts that have been shut following the strike action.
“The wholesale denial of the constitutional rights of these people over this protracted period, with no immediate expectation of amelioration or relief, is a staggering and grave injustice to them. These “casualties” of the strike action bear no responsibility for the state of affairs that triggered the strike by JUSUN.
“In fact, many of them will include those who support the cause of a free and independent Judiciary – the mantra of the struggle now waged by JUSUN – and they will wonder how they should bear responsibility, on this kind of debilitating scale, for the failure of governments to guarantee the implementation of the high court’s judgment. They have unfairly, unjustly and disproportionately borne the brunt of the strike action”, it noted.
