A total of 10 persons representing PRAWA and other Criminal Justice Institutions were present in the Joint implementation meeting on enhancing coordination and monitoring within the justice sector held in PRAWA office in Abuja. The meeting sought to review the draft operational guidelines and working methods of the Criminal Justice Administration Committee (CJAC) and discuss performance reporting approach and templates of key Criminal Justice Institutions especially Nigeria Police Force, Ministry of Justice, National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, Legal Aid Council of Nigeria and Nigerian Prisons Service.

PRAWA Deputy Director, Mr. Yinka Lawal gave a brief update on Project 6 activities, highlighting the accomplishments before the resignation of the former Chief Judge of the FCT and in particular the designation of desk officer for the project.

The discussion of the performance reporting templates of CJIs present at the meeting and inputs were made to the draft operational guidelines. It was noted that under 2(2) (b) of the Operational Guidelines of CJAC, membership will include the Executive Secretary of the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in persons, the Executive Secretary of National Human Rights Commission, Commandant General of National Civil Defence Corps and the Director, Abuja Environmental Protection Board. The section 3 (1) (c & h) of the guideline made provisions that will ensure the Criminal Justice System in FCT is generally maintained and adequately financed and also that persons awaiting trial are, as far as possible, not detained in prison custody beyond their terms of sentence if found guilty.

During the course of the meeting, observations were made with respect to Section 3.1 (h) which pointed out that Awaiting Trial Persons (ATPs) should not be detained beyond the number of years they would spend if convicted and they should not be detained in other detention facilities of EFCC, ICPC, SSS and the likes.

The Director PRS, Legal Aid Council of Nigeria, Mr. Bamidele Ibikunle said that a clause should be included under this section to bring in non-custodial sentences to discourage the incarceration of persons in prisons. This was buttressed by PRAWA Deputy Director, Mr. Yinka Lawal saying that there is need to discourage detaining people in custody especially for simple offences. On this same issue, the Police Commissioner, FCT Command, said that a provision encapsulating non custodial sentences has been included under the new Act of the NPS. The CJAC Secretariat under Section 5.2 (i), would be supported by the Project 6 Joint Implementation Team also known as the technical team which will meet from time to time. It was also noted that the CJAC Secretariat seats in the office of the Chief Judge. The technical team can push to formalize the CJAC Secretariat.

On the matter of the mode of reporting of member CJIs, the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria will develop different reporting templates for different purposes which will be classified into criminal and civil cases with the criminal cases reporting having a template for reporting completed cases and another for reporting pending cases which includes serial number, registration number, case number, name of accused, sex, age, offence, court of trial, name of counsel and designation of counsel.

The Federal Ministry of Justice’s weekly template report will contains date column, suit name and number, name of lawyer handling a case, whether case has been filed in court, status of case in court, the type of offence and the section under which the offence is charged. NAPTIP’s reporting template contains information like number of convictions, gender, the area where the case is emanating from, the section of the law where the charge is preferred, the state of origin of accused person, the name and suit number of the matter, status in court. The ICPC’s reporting template will include name of the case filed in court, date filed in court, status of case and name of counsel handling the matter.

The FRSC mostly deals with traffic offences and do not send offenders to the prisons if convicted, and their reporting template will contains information like name of offences committed by defaulters, number of sittings by the mobile court, fine column to capture if there is payment of fine or not.

Finally the NPS report template will have information like convicted inmates reports which includes convicted inmates male/female, lifers, foreign nationals, latest date of release, earliest date of release, unconvicted inmates which includes civil inmates, criminal and civil lunatics and robbery suspects.
PRAWA Deputy Director, Mr. Yinka Lawal thanked participants for making out time to attend the meeting and hoped that the outcome will be of immense benefit to the citizens of this country.