Funding of courts by state govts illegal – Hon

Constitutional lawyer, Sebastine Hon (SAN) has stated that the funding of some courts by state governments was unconstitutional as it exposes the courts to undue manipulation by state governors.

He said the state governments’ funding of state high courts, sharia courts of appeal and customary courts of appeal is a breach of Sections 6 (1); 84(1) and (4) of the 1999 Constitution.

In a statement over the weekend, Hon said these courts were established for the Federation and as such, the remuneration, salaries and allowances of all judicial officers of the courts have been placed at the doorstep of the Federal Government by the constitution.

He therefore, asked the National Judicial Council (NJC) to “collate all capital and recurrent expenditures of these courts from their various heads, make a consolidated budget and present it to the Budget Office for inclusion in the yet to be submitted 2018 Federal budget.”

“Section 84(7) of the Constitution provides that “the recurrent expenditure of judicial offices in the Federation (in addition to salaries and allowances of the judicial officers mentioned in subsection (4) of this section) shall be a charge upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation.”

“The phrase ‘recurrent expenditure’ here carries its ordinary, grammatical meaning – ‘that which happens again and again.’ This then means that all year-in, year-out expenditure of these courts are a direct responsibility of the Federal Government! There cannot be any other reasonable interpretation of this subsection, which has decidedly used the words ‘of judicial offices’ (not ‘officers’),” he added.