'I Still Can't Understand' By Adesina Ogunlana

I still can’t understand. Can’t understand why, there are only about 30 sheriffs to service the Lagos State Judiciary; the LSJ you may like to know has numerous customary courts, 105 magistrate courts and no less than 50 High Courts. These sheriffs, far from being super-men, simply cannot cope with the huge work load of their office. You may also like to know that in every working day, no less than 200 fresh cases (civil and criminal) are filed. So the only logical thing to do is employing more sheriffs. But the authorities have not done that. For obvious reason. Obvious reason that there is no money.

Oh yes I can’t understand. Can’t understand why the Probate Section of the Lagos State High Court remains a long room of discomfort and discontent. Every thing or at least almost everything smells of dreariness there. Hardly does anything function in the place. Forms takes ages to be seen and procured. The necessary advertisement gets going at the pace of a constipatated snail. As for the actual processing of the application, the applicant or and his counsel will scale through a decathlon, then moan and groan through a marathon and then be made to crave through a stretch of a thicket of thorns before they can think of success. Why is this so? The place is simply under-funded –no computers, no photocopiers, many times no files, papers, pins and countless times the needed officers are “not on seat”. I am a living witness to this amazing Probate Section. I started the process of a letter of administration Jan 2007 but got the L.A only September 2008 (a whopping 19 months!)

Why is this so? The answer is obvious – there is no money for the Lagos Judiciary to do the needful. Let us leave the Probate Registry and go to the Records Section. And go to the Archives Section. And go to the Open Registry. And go to each of the courts. What do you see in all these places? Poverty induced inefficiency. Things simply don’t work well. The workers are not well paid and they don’t have enough equipment and materials to work well. For example in the Ikeja High Court Library, there is no photocopy service.

When you ask the authorities, and I have been asking the authorities since 2001, the standard, unchanging, unrepentant, boring and annoying answer is “there is no money.”
Yes, this is exactly what I cannot understand. How can the Lagos State Judiciary and Lagos State Government in all honesty claim that they have no funds to pay their non-judicial officers well and provide adequately for their offices?

How can the authorities make this monstrous claim, when only about three weeks ago, brand, new cars (reports have it that they number no less than twenty, each costing no less than five-million naira each) were “dashed” out to retired Judges!

Everybody knows that a retired staff is out of service. Ordinarily and reasonably such a staff no matter how highly placed should not gain precedence in terms of welfare over serving officers.
Yet the Lagos Judiciary has doled out, maybe one hundred million naira, or even more to a few out-of-service personnel while hundreds of still serving staff are wallowing in the stinking mire of past and present continuous impecuniousity!

Let the truth be told, this is nothing but sheer oppression and wickedness that the Almighty must find unpalatable. Why are the powers that be, treat the lowly with such spite and inconsideration?

Honestly, I don’t understand. Can’t understand.