A bill aimed at increasing the number of High Court Judges in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) from 70 to 100 has passed a second reading in the House of Representatives.
The Bill seeks to address a key feature of the judiciary’s ability to provide timely justice by increasing the number of judges in the FCT’s High Court.
The Bill, sponsored by the Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu, Babajimi Benson, Akin Rotimi, and five others, was approved for a second reading in plenary on Thursday.
The Bill proposes an amendment to Section 1 of the existing Act to increase the number of Judges in the FCT High Court from the current maximum of 70 Judges (resulting from the Act’s 2016 Amendment) to a minimum of 100 Judges, allowing for greater judicial capacity to address the court’s current and future needs.
Leading the debate on Bill’s general principles, one of its co-sponsors, Jonathan Gbefwi, recalled that at the start of the 2022/2023 legal year, the FCT High Court carried forward 12,513 pending cases from the previous year, indicating a significant backlog and that over the same period, the court assigned an additional 5,952 new cases, bringing workload to a level that severely strains available judicial resources.
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cc: Daily Post Ng
