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Justice Walter Onnoghen, the Chief Justice of Nigeria on Tuesday lamented the heavy workload Justices of the Supreme Court were battling with.
Justice Onnoghen on Tuesday reechoed what he said in a statement in September 2018 that the diary for scheduled cases of the apex court was already full for the next two years.
The CJN, who spoke at the Main Court of the Supreme Court during the swearing-in of Justice Uwani Abba-Aji as a justice of the apex court, said the state of the diary of the court was an indication there was a lot of work for the justices to do.
He said, “Sometime in September, 2018, I issued a statement to the effect that the Supreme Court diary is full with appeals set down for hearing up to the year 2021.
“Accordingly, I explained the import of the warning to mean that any matter that is assigned a date must be heard and determined one way or the other on that date.
“For appeals that may be discovered to have defects, I advised counsel to take necessary steps to amend such defects before the due hearing date.”
Abba-Aji, who hails from Yobe State, was the presiding judge of the Kaduna Division of Court of Appeal until President Muhammadu Buhari approved his elevation to the bench of the Supreme Court last year.