Bread for the Poor – Access to Justice, key to Poverty Reduction in Nigeria

Beyond providing an arena for dispute resolution, a legal system affords people the platform to ventilate their grievances against political leaders and public officials, hold them to account for indiscrete and corrupt actions, and protect themselves against exploitative exercise of power and authority. In this way, access to justice not only guarantees the protection of human rights but also aids the realisation of a broader vision of development and poverty alleviation. In Nigeria, the poor have very minimal access to justice and use the legal system infrequently except during their rampant encounter in criminal prosecutions. Creating a justice system that is accessible and responsive to the needs of the poor is therefore crucial to poverty reduction and development in Nigeria.

National growth is severely undermined by unbridled abuse of political power by our elected and career public officials. The failure of the rule of law is at the heart of Nigeria’s dwindling economy, which causes extreme hardship for the poor. A deficit of rule of law is tantamount to a lawlessness syndrome according to World Bank’s Development Report of 1997. This lawlessness syndrome largely contributes to poverty escalation in Nigeria in many different ways:

The country’s abundant resources are used by government officials, the political and social elites as their exclusive preserve, while the rest of Nigerians suffer untold hardships without any positive impact whatsoever of the country’s resources on their lives.

Government officials and the elites do not even invest looted funds in the country to create employment, instead they transfer the money into foreign bank accounts; hence millions of youths languish in hopeless joblessness and concomitant poverty.

Government establishments and services are fraudulently sold off to political cronies in the guise of privatisation, hence there is zero monitoring for effective service delivery. Nigerians are therefore compelled to pay high premiums for little or no service.

Roads are left in terrible conditions, and government fails to provide safe transport system; thus the poor, who cannot afford to move about in powerful SUVs or perhaps by air, mostly fall victims of constant road accidents – poor families lose their breadwinners in this way and become even poorer.

Unemployment caused by political corruption often contributes to high rates of crime, and the poor suffer most from crime victimisation because they cannot afford to build fortified houses or be guarded by personal police details or bodyguards.

Public and even private establishments extort money from weary and unsuspecting job applicants in the name of recruitment exercises sometimes for non-existing or already filled job positions.

Government officials abandons public utilities to decay, while they and their family members resort to foreign countries to enjoy such utilities like electricity, healthcare, education, etc. The poor are left to languish in the decadent services available here in Nigeria.

Government authorises or allows all manner of extortionate taxes, rates and levies that amount to multiple taxation, which suffocate or discourage small and medium scale enterprises.

Senior grade government officials earn outrageous salaries and allowances, while the meager salaries of low grade public servants are often delayed and diverted by senior officials into personal short or medium term investments to earn huge personal profits. Meanwhile these poor workers suffer untold hardship and economic difficulties due to unpaid or delayed salaries.

University students are often exploited sexually or economically by some unscrupulous lecturers, and students who do not comply are victimised, sometimes resulting in delayed graduation, rustication or dropping out. Thus, the ability of such students to secure employment is delayed, diminished or thwarted thereby perpetuating poverty in their families.

Police and other law enforcement agents often arrest, detain, torture or even kill defenseless and sometimes innocent persons without trial. The families of such victims suffer more economic and emotional distress as a result of the incarceration, maiming or murder of their loved ones by the police.

In the above ways and more, the poor and millions of less privileged Nigerians suffer extreme hardships in the hands of those who exercise public power with impunity. The lawlessness of these duty bearing powerful leaders conduce to the continuous pauperisation of millions of powerless right holders in Nigeria.

Now, the role of the courts is not merely to settle disputes and interpret laws, but embrace the more important rule of law function of supervising the ways in which government powers are exercised. This process of ensuring political accountability involves the answerability and enforceability components. Answerability is the onus on public officials to provide to the public information regarding their actions including the reasons behind such actions. Enforceability on the other hand is the ability of the judicial arm to impose sanctions on political leaders and other public officials who have acted illegally or otherwise abused their powers. Enforceability further incorporates the ability of the courts to give authoritative pronouncements on the legality or otherwise of activities of public officials. Thus, the chief aim of the political accountability process is to subject power to the rule of law.

The judiciary in Nigeria is constitutionally empowered to perform this political accountability function. The idea that the judiciary should act as a check upon exercise of legislative and executive powers is a fundamental component of the doctrine of separation of powers. Unfortunately, this aspect of judicial powers in Nigeria is hampered by the role of the executive and legislature in the appointment of Judges. Therefore, timorous Judges, more concerned about their job security and career growth, often renege when confronted with cases that demand political accountability, hiding under one legal technicality or another. A few judges have however tended towards judicial activism and uphold the law in political accountability cases except where they are encumbered by the odious immunity clause.

Be that as it may, many poor Nigerians unfortunately are not usually able to use the justice system at all to enforce political accountability for the following reasons:

Hiring of lawyers and using the courts can be very expensive, which the poor cannot afford.

Lack of institutional skills necessary to understand and use the legal system coupled with the social stigma that is often attached to any encounter with the law, make the poor mistrust the justice system and less inclined to using it.

Lack of access to legal information and legal literacy, which issues from lack of a comprehensive and timely system of publishing and disseminating laws. In a situation where even some judges and lawyers find it difficult to get access to current legal materials and authorities, it is unrealistic to expect ordinary lay persons – especially the poor – to have any understanding of their legal rights.

There is inadequate legal representation in most rural communities, where there is little or no presence of practising lawyers and law courts. For the poor, it is rather a foregone alternative to go in search of lawyers and justice in the city, than to abandon their daily subsistence endeavours – a matter of opportunity cost.

Justice delayed, they say, is justice denied. Unfortunately, the justice system in Nigeria can be very slow and the poor tend to require the machinery of justice in cases where they are at risk of destitution – because their most fundamental components of livelihood are at stake.

To expand the frontiers of access to justice for the poor therefore, it is important to:

a. Eliminate laws with distinctively anti-poor component;

b. Reform legal procedures to create greater access for individuals and NGOs acting in public interest – the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules of 2009 did a bit of this, but judges need to be more proactive and bold in giving life to the Rules;

c. CSOs, NGOs and lawyers must come to the aid of the poor by doing a lot more public interest litigation and offering pro bono legal services to the poor;

d. Courts must also be inclined to awarding substantial costs against defendants in political accountability actions when they find in favour of a plaintiff;

e. Reduce legal technicalities and simplify legal language.

The foregoing ways can very well lend a point of departure to efforts at enhancing the capacity of poor Nigerians to gain access to justice. Indeed, it is access to justice that will enable the poor to claim constitutionally guaranteed rights and to move out of a context in which diverse forms of illegality contribute to the reproduction of poverty defined in its broadest terms.

Francis Chigozie Moneke is the Executive Director Human Rights & Empowerment Project Ltd (HREP).