Area Court, Magistrates can’t handle rape cases – CJ

The Chief Judge (CJ) of Nasarawa State, Justice Suleiman Dikko, on Tuesday said that only the high courts were competent to handle rape cases in the state. Dikko said this at Wamba Prison in Wamba Local Government Area (LGA) of the state during the continuation of his four-day-working tour of prisons across the state.

He, therefore, ordered the area courts’ judges and magistrates to, immediately, reassign rape cases before them to high courts for lack of jurisdiction. The chief judge also said that area courts should , henceforth, reject new cases of rape brought to them by the police explaining that, “it is only the high courts that are empowered to handle such cases”.

According to him, “apart from cases of rape, we had since 2013, ordered lower court judges in the state to reject robbery and culpable homicide cases’’. He attributed the delay in justice administration in the state to the action and inaction of some stakeholders in the judicial system.

“Some stakeholders, such as the police, go ahead to assign rape, robbery and culpable homicide cases to lower courts knowing well that such courts do not have jurisdiction over such matters.

“So for the purpose of ensuring speedy administration in the state, I have ordered all judges of lower courts to reject such cases.  “All these measures are to decongest the prisons, avoid delay in the justice delivery and make sure that cases are assigned to the appropriate courts,” he said.

He added that the purpose of his visit was to ensure that inmates wrongly sent to prisons were set free in accordance with the relevant laws.
The chief judge also ordered the welfare department of every prison to get the cell phone numbers of inmates already granted bail but who were still in prison to contact their family members.

Dikko, therefore, urged the police, prisons’ authorities and other stakeholders to rise up to their responsibilities to sanitise the system and ensure speedy administration of justice in the state. He also advised inmates awaiting trial but had been in remand for many years for lack of fund to engage the services of a counsel. Members of the Human Rights Commission in the state; officials of the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria, judges and private lawyers accompanied the chief judge on the visit.