JURISTS ASK AGF TO FORWARD REVIEWED LAWS TO N'ASSEMBLY

By NBF NEWS

The President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Salami, on Wednesday in Abuja called on the newly appointed Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Bello Adoke (SAN), to forward the draft laws prepared by the Nigerian Law Reform Commission to the National Asembly.

Salami spoke at the opening of a regional conference of the Commonwealth Association of Law Reforms Agencies at Rockview Hotel, Abuja.

He added that the NLRC had reviewed some obsolete laws in Nigeria and submitted the draft reviews to the office of the AGF for onward transmission to the National Assembly for passage into law.

But the president of Court of Appeal noted that many of such reviews were gathering dust in the office of the AGF.

He cited the example of the Marriage Act which had been reviewed but had not been submitted to the lawmakers for consideration.

The Chairman of the NLRC, Justice Umaru Kalgo, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, also made a similar call to the new AGF.

He said, 'The Law Reform Commission existed for just 30 years now, and during this time, it had fully exercised its powers under the law establishing it and in each case submitted its reports and recommendations to the AGF according to the law for implementation.

'Unfortunately, quite a lot of these recommendations have not been implemented or seen the light of the day.'

He said that the question of implementation of law reform recommendations or reports submitted to the AGF should be seriously looked into

He said, 'The only option open to us in Nigeria to improve the situation and satisfy our mandate is to press for the amendment of the existing law to ensure that a limited period of time is given for the AGF to react to the submissions of the commission, failing which the commission should be at liberty to contact the National Assembly direct on the matter.'

Justice Kalgo said that allowing the commission direct access to the legislature would help to transform the commission as its recommendation would have a chance of becoming laws

Both Salami and Kalgo underlined the importance of law reform in the development of any nation saying that no country could move forward without the reforms of its obsolete laws.