In a recent meeting with the Senate Committee on Judiciary, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, called for increased funding for the Justice Ministry. He highlighted the financial challenges faced by the ministry in 2023 and outlined ambitious plans for 2024.
Fagbemi revealed that the ministry had only received a fraction of its allocated budget in 2023, with N617 million for capital expenditure and N2.734 billion for recurrent expenditure out of the allocated N3.3 billion and N4.6 billion, respectively. This shortfall significantly impacted the ministry’s performance.
Also, he stated that the ministry is determined to achieve a paradigm shift, looking ahead to 2024. According to the AGF, it has allocated N5.3 billion funding for capital expenditure and N8.8 billion for recurrent expenditure in the 2024 budget. Fagbemi urged the committee to support the ministry, highlighting its fundamental role in driving the current administration’s roadmap for the justice sector.
Fagbemi talked about the ministry’s initiatives to further the government’s strategy of having state counsels take on more cases. He did concede, though, that there are some situations in which hiring experienced outside attorneys is unavoidable. He underlined the necessity of increased funding in order to improve the capability and morale of state counsels by regularly covering costs such as robe allowances and duty travel allowances.
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The minister emphasised the need to pay private solicitors’ fees for their services as well as the ministry’s costly defence of the nation in international litigation and arbitration. He also talked about the difficulties posed by a backlog of debts that must be paid off in order for the ministry to continue working towards lowering the government’s exposure to judgement debts and guaranteeing that projects and programmes are carried out without interference from the legal system.
He said that in order to prevent embarrassment and enforcement measures, the ministry is now defending over 2000 cases on behalf of the federal government and its MDAs. This calls for thorough prosecution and competent defence.
The meeting’s goal, according to Mohammed Mongonu, the head of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, was to request that the minister provide an assessment of the 2023 budget in accordance with the constitutional mandate that gives the legislature the authority to supervise MDAs. #funding