Details

Therefore this one-day roundtable for about 60 media and legal practitioners was organized on December 11, 2013 at Protea Hotel Asokoro Abuja. The roundtable on the role of the judiciary and media in justice delivery in Nigeria served as a platform where Representatives from the Judiciary, the Media and Civil Society Organisations could interchange ideas on how to cooperate together and advance justice delivery.

The resource persons at the event were Justice Ishaq Bello of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief A. Awomolo SAN, a senior advocate, Mrs. Ranti Daudu, a Commissioner at the National Human Rights Commission, Mallam Shehu Sani, the President of Civil Rights Congress, and Mr. Abdulrahman Abdulrauf, the political editor of Blue Print Newspaper, who all addressed the issue at stake from different perspectives.

The Country Representative of KAS, Mrs. Hildegard Behrendt-Kigozi, explained that the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation hopes to make a contribution to the enhancement of the democracy in Nigeria by organizing this roundtable discussion.

Journalists from many media houses were also present and aired their views. They explained that especially in political cases before court, where they have to report, when the judiciary is shying away from giving official information without delay, there reporting becomes very difficult.

A senior lawyer in attendance, who had seen both sides as journalist and as a lawyer advised the judiciary to create a media office, in addition to the registrar office. This is necessary to avoid the media getting their information through the backdoor, which may be right, and may also be wrong, which invariably taints the image of the judiciary as well as the media in the country.