The Administration of Criminal Justice Monitoring Committee (ACJMC), in Cross River has said that Administration of Criminal Justice Law (ACJL) will remain ineffective, even elusive, in Nigeria until the government decides to fund and train stakeholders.
Mr James Ibor, the Secretary of ACJMC and a human and child rights lawyer, who made the remark on Thursday – yesterday, February 20 – in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, described ACJL as a beautiful law whose implementation is impossible because those who should be implementing it lack the resources and capacity to do so.
ACJL is a legal framework enacted by various States in Nigeria to improve the efficiency, fairness and transparency of the criminal justice system.
It is modeled after the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015, which applies at the federal level.
Each state in Nigeria adopts its own version of the ACJL, tailoring it to local needs while maintaining the core principles of justice reform
According to Ibor, at the center of the implementation of ACJL are the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), law officers in the Ministry of Justice, judges, magistrates and the Correctional Service.
“The big question is, does the poorly funded NPF, which is the most primary in the administration of criminal justice, have the capacity and facilities to implement the police Act 2020?” Ibor quipped.
“Most times, the police will have to extort members of the public to be able to do their work and respond to distress calls.
“The NPF cannot give what it does not have; we have to start budgeting properly for our police while ensuring that there are timely releases so they can be trained and their activities funded.”
The human rights lawyer said it would interest the public to know that officers of the Nigeria Police still buy their uniforms, papers for taking statements and even their own handcuffs.
Another problem of the police force is its commercialisation to guard the political elites while leaving a very small number to serve the people, ibor lamented.
