Fashola To Judiciary: Audit Your Courts, Listen To Litigants

Former Lagos State governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has called for an independent assessment of litigants’ and other users’ experiences of the state’s justice system, including how long cases take, how judgments are enforced, and how effectively the courts serve businesses.

Fashola also proposed establishing a judicial ombudsman to give citizens a formal channel for reporting their experiences and complaints about the justice system.

He made the proposals on Tuesday while delivering the keynote address at the Lagos Judiciary 2026 New Legal Year Summit, themed “Justice as an Economic Infrastructure: Strengthening the Judiciary for Africa’s Fifth Largest Economy.”

The former governor said the judiciary’s effectiveness should not be measured solely by legal principles, advocacy and the number of cases handled, but also by the quality of service experienced by those who depend on the courts.

He urged the Lagos State Judiciary to commission a professional survey of court users to obtain direct evidence of the justice delivery system’s strengths and weaknesses.

Fashola also said the assessment should establish how long cases take from commencement to conclusion, how effectively commercial disputes are resolved, and whether judgments are enforced in a way that restores successful litigants to the position they ought to occupy.

He stressed that the exercise should also determine whether the time spent on an average case in Lagos was consistent with litigants’ and other users’ expectations.

“This initiative, in my view, invites us to look at justice beyond the precepts of legalism and all of the advocacy that takes place, and to see the essence of justice and the judiciary as a science,” he said.

Fashola further maintained that treating the judiciary as critical economic infrastructure required stakeholders to examine how efficiently the institution supported commercial activity and resolved disputes that could affect businesses and investments.

He drew particular attention to land and property disputes, describing land as an important basis for capital formation and business activity.

The former governor also questioned whether the justice system was sufficiently responsive to disputes affecting businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.

Fashola noted that Lagos had previously demonstrated the benefits of periodically reviewing its justice system. He recalled reforms introduced decades ago, including changes to court rules and procedures, the expansion of alternative dispute resolution, frontloading and the recruitment of younger lawyers.

He further insisted that those reforms demonstrated the need for continuous institutional self-examination to determine whether existing procedures remained adequate for emerging challenges.

Fashola also advocated greater use of informal and alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms, arguing that not every dispute needed to proceed through conventional litigation.

He said continued development of alternative dispute resolution could help reduce pressure on the formal courts, particularly in customary, community and other disputes that can be resolved outside conventional proceedings.

The former governor urged the judiciary to critically examine whether past reforms were still delivering the desired outcomes amid changing economic and social realities.

He also called for a broader examination of the judiciary’s role as an arm of government, particularly regarding accountability and the experiences of citizens who interact with the institution.

Fashola said the proposed judicial ombudsman could give court users an independent avenue to raise concerns about their experiences, giving the judiciary useful feedback to improve service delivery.

He said such mechanisms would enable the justice system to identify recurring problems from its users’ perspective and respond to them as part of an ongoing process of institutional improvement.