Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC), a British Council programme in Nigeria, has begun efforts for the reform of the criminal justice bail, to ensure fairness and consistency in the system.Mr Oluwatoyin Badejogbin, a Component Manager with RoLAC, said at a workshop that the aim was to ensure fairness and consistency in the Nigeria bail system.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was organised for Magistrates, Judges and researchers of the Nigeria Judicial Institute (NJI).
According to Badejogbin, a key area of RoLAC’s focus is on reforming access to bail and the initiative seeks to advance Nigeria’s bail system and contribute to its reform.
He said the idea was to improve access to pre-trial release, as a way of ensuring a sustainable decrease in the population of custodial centres across the country.
Badejogbin further said that the aim was to make Nigeria’s criminal justice process fairer and more efficient, without placing the integrity of the process into jeopardy.
“The court is a very important subject, it is generally accepted that the problem of congestion that we have in the correctional centres across the country is due to the bail conditions arising from the court.
“There are a lot of issues taken into consideration, one of these is whether the grant of bail will not jeopardise trial, at times, there are no guarantee that a person will appear in court after granting bail.
“There are situations where the Judge always use discretion either to grant bail or set stringent conditions, this workshop is to look at prepositions that will bring expanded access in bail granting in Nigeria.
“The aim is to make decision about bail to become fairer, so that at the end of the day, we can have resources to track down defendants after granted bail.
“This will also make it easy for Judges to consider granting of bail in this situation,” he said.
Justice Kayode Agunloye of the FCT High Court, however, cautioned that whatever reform that will be brought to the Nigeria criminal justice system, it must be in line with the environment.
According to the Judge, it is not out of place for Nigeria to import those things that are good about other countries, but it must be in practice of the Nigeria environment.
“The note of caution I will sound is that when those new things get into our country such as idea, technology and others, we should make it to suit our environment.
“A person granted bail without asking for surety, if that is the practice in other countries, that will not work in Nigeria except there are mechanisms put in place to ensure that,” he said.
