On the 26th of February 2024, exactly a week today, the Supreme of Nigeria welcomed eleven new justices adding to the existing ten justices at the Supreme Court so as to get the statutory full complement of Justices.
It is pertinent to point out that for years now, the Supreme Court has not had a complete number of justices as required by law. As statutorily provided, the Supreme Court is to have a total of twenty one justices to be headed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and in each case, it is expected that at least three justices preside and in some highly regarded matters, at least five to seven justices are to preside.
It has been the custom that judges or justices are appointed and screened from the immediate preceding or the immediate lower courts. For instance, the eleven justices that were recently sworn into the Supreme Court were appointed or promoted from the Court of Appeal, the same way Court of Appeal judges are to be appointed or promoted from the high courts.
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Just as the Supreme Court is expected to have a total number of twenty-one justices, the Court of Appeal which is the immediate preceding court is statutorily expected to have the total number of forty-one judges which is to be headed by the president of the court of appeal.
The Federal High Court has ninety-four judges spread across the thirty-eight divisions in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. You should note that there is only one federal high court in Nigeria but different judicial divisions in different states. Each state has its own judicial division and judges can be transferred, redeployed or reassigned within the 38 different judicial divisions.
The federal high court is headed by the chief judge of the federal high court just as the one the Supreme Court is headed by the Chief Justice of Nigeria.
As for state high courts, each state has its different judicial compositions and there are a total of 37 state high courts in Nigeria spread across the 36 states of the federation and the federal capital territory, Abuja all sharing concurrent jurisdictions. Each state high court is headed by the chief judge of the court.
It is arguably better for courts to have more judges/justices or at least have the number of judges as statutorily required because having a lesser number of judges is the primary contributor to the delay in the dispensation of Justice as we often complain of; the lesser number of judges/justices simply translates to more work for the fewer judges available but if there are more judges presiding in different cases then justices/ judgements can be dispensed speedily.
The Supreme Court, the appeal court and the high court (both federal and state high court) are regarded as the upper or superior courts in Nigeria with the Supreme Court at the apex whilst the customary courts, and magistrate courts are all regarded as the lower courts or the inferior courts.
