Tribunals

Although the tribunals had been established in 1982, the law providing for the creation of a national public tribunal to hear and determine appeals from, and decisions of, regional public tribunals was not passed until August 1984.

The judiciary is modeled on the French system, with a High Constitutional Court, High Court of Justice, Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, criminal tribunals, and tribunals of first instance.

The Tribunals loosely correspond to groupings or portions of modern-day nations; each has a distinct cultural and historical flavor which is expanded in the Tribunals of Hermes series.

Apart from the presidential election petition court, there are election petition tribunals set up across the country to hear disputes arising from this year's governorship, National Assembly, and state assembly elections.

A similar issue had arisen in cases concerning fines imposed by LESA officials and a Magistrates’ Court had recently declared that regional Tribunals were not lawfully authorized to enforce such fines.

But INEC’s failure to resolve critical points of law before election result declarations has now given the tribunals, particularly the PEPT and Supreme Court, additional work to do and created the anxiety heating up the polity.

Etiaba said the expectations of Nigerians is that election tribunals must strive to do justice by harping less on technicalities and seeking to do substantial justice.

How else can you get reparations and war-crime tribunals?

Increasingly, the tribunals of lawyers are ordering massive payments.

INEC made the clarifications in the aftermath of a report that 94.4% of all the strands of elections failed at the Tribunals.

In its bid to do so, Bell has lost a long string of cases before the regulators and the tribunals.

In the special courts, tribunals, forums set up for crimes against women and children, only women lawyers should be kept as representatives of the government.

Rafsanjani stressed that the TMG and many other civil society organisations consider the attempt to pervert justice at the election tribunals through corruption as an onslaught on the judiciary.

The ply-cards read thus; ‘Tribunals Panels are not fair on today’s judgment’, ‘Imole has come to stay’, ‘Osun Citizen reject Oyetola’, ‘Injustice to Ademola Adeleke’, ‘Imole Mandate we stand’.

The Supreme Court has clarified that tribunals functioning under the strict parameters of their governing legislations cannot direct the government to make policy.

They urged their opponents who had approached Election petition tribunals to withdraw their petitions and join them in moving their LGAs forward.

Thus, petitions arising from National Assembly elections are heard by designated tribunals.

While councils can refuse requests, this is often challenged by parents who normally win in costly tribunals.

Williamson (pictured below) observed 20 tribunals as part of the research project, as well as conducting interviews.

Although Rwanda’s government established community tribunals in 2002, allowing victims to hear “confessions” from genocide perpetrators, the suffering of rape survivors and their children has not been a priority.