BEVERLY HILLS, September 04, (THEWILL) – Vice President Yemi Osibanjo has commended the ruling of the Apex court on virtual proceedings. He said the ruling will save “our system of justice another catastrophic round of technical decisions around the constitutionality of virtual proceedings”.
Osibanjo stated this on Thursday at a webinar on media coverage of virtual court proceedings in Nigeria, organized by the Gavel International Ltd.
According to Prof. Osinbajo, “we are at a point where at least we know that virtual hearings are legal. This means that the Supreme Court is satisfied that appropriate means can be found to ensure that hearings are public and that the press and indeed members of the public can access the proceedings. I think that an opportunity that this offers us is to get rid of this issue of technicality as much as possible. And I am so pleased that the Supreme Court did not even hesitate in saying that virtual proceedings are legal. It is really a breath of fresh air considering the ways that we tend to magnify the issue of technicality to the point where you wonder where justice is.”
“I am hoping that the opportunity we have in virtual proceedings will also be an opportunity to dispense with several of the unnecessary technical rules that we have in our adjectival law, laws of procedure, evidence and all that. And hopefully, we are able to get to the heart of trials and the heart of the matter such that we are buck down unnecessarily by technicality”, he added
