Bill To Increase Number of FCT High Court Judges From 70 To 100 Passes Second Reading

A Bill seeking to increase the number of High Court Judges in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, from 70 to 100 has passed a second reading in the House of Representatives.

The Bill seeks to address a fundamental aspect of the judiciary’s ability to deliver timely justice, which is an increase in the number of judges in the High Court of the FCT.

The Bill sponsored by the Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu, Babajimi Benson, Akin Rotimi and five others was passed for a second reading at the plenary on Thursday, November 21.

The Bill proposes an amendment to Section 1 of the extant Act to increase the number of Judges in the FCT High Court from the current maximum of 70 Judges (arising from the 2016 Amendment of the Act) to a minimum of 100 Judges thus allowing for greater judicial capacity to address the current and future needs of the court.

Leading the debate on its general principles of the Bill, one of the co-sponsors Jonathan Gbefwi recalled that at the beginning of the 2022/2023 legal year, the FCT High Court carried forward 12,513 pending cases from the previous year, underscoring a substantial backlog and over the same period, the court assigned an additional 5,952 new cases, bringing the workload to a level that greatly strains available judicial resources.

He explained that the High Court of the FCT is limited in the number of judges it can engage, saying this inadequacy significantly affects the volume of cases brought before it. Read on www.tracknews.ng