{"id":7021,"date":"2025-06-15T14:14:35","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T14:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/?p=7021"},"modified":"2025-06-15T14:14:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T14:14:35","slug":"senate-initiate-bill-to-expand-supreme-court-justices-from-21-to-30-citing-backlog-of-pending-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/2025\/06\/15\/senate-initiate-bill-to-expand-supreme-court-justices-from-21-to-30-citing-backlog-of-pending-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Initiate Bill To Expand Supreme Court Justices From 21 To 30 Citing Backlog Of Pending Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Nigerian Senate is considering a bill that would increase the number of Supreme Court justices from the current 21 to 30, to alleviate the growing backlog of cases clogging the apex court.<\/h3>\n

The lawmaker representing Imo West senatorial district, Senator Osita Izunaso<\/strong>, disclosed this during a press briefing on Friday in Abuja, held to mark his second year in the 10th National Assembly.<\/p>\n

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The senator noted that although the apex court reached its full constitutional complement of 21 justices following the appointment of 11 new judges in 2023, the court remains overstretched.<\/p>\n

Izunaso said,\u00a0\u201cEven with the full complement of 21 justices, the Supreme Court is overwhelmed. The volume of cases reaching the court daily is alarming. Some litigants are being given hearing dates as far ahead as 2027 and 2028.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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He explained that the proposed amendment would enable the apex court to sit in more panels simultaneously, thereby expediting the delivery of justice.<\/p>\n

Izunaso said,\u00a0\u201cSupreme Court justices typically sit in panels of five, or seven for constitutional matters.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we have 30 justices, it allows the formation of at least five panels at once. That way, more cases can be handled at a faster pace.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The lawmaker also called for sweeping reforms to filter out trivial cases from reaching the Supreme Court, arguing that it should be reserved for matters of national or constitutional significance only.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should a land matter in my village end up in the Supreme Court?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0he queried.<\/p>\n

He noted,\u00a0\u201cMany of these issues should start from the customary court and end at the high court. The apex court should be for terrorism, homicide, grand corruption \u2014 not tenancy or family disputes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

He cited examples where tenancy disputes like \u201cpay me my rent\u201d or \u201cmy landlord kicked me out\u201d had reached the highest court in the land, contributing to judicial congestion.<\/p>\n

Sharing a real-life example, Izunaso said,\u00a0\u201cA case involving deceased litigants was fixed for 2026, even though the families had already settled the matter three years earlier. That\u2019s an indictment of our system.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Addressing suggestions of setting up regional supreme courts, the senator firmly pushed back.<\/p>\n

\u201cA unitary Supreme Court preserves the sanctity and unity of our judicial system. What we need is better filtration at a lower level, not more Supreme Courts,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nigerian Senate is considering a bill that would increase the number of Supreme Court justices from the current 21 to 30, to alleviate the growing backlog of cases clogging the apex court. The...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7023,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021\/revisions\/7023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beadysword.com.ng\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}