FISCAL AUTONOMY IS GOOD FOR JUDICIARY BUT… – GOVERNOR OKOWA

The Governor of Delta State, Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa has stated that his administration was not against granting fiscal autonomy for the Judicial arm of government but it must be on a realistic budget. 

The Governor was speaking when Judges in the State led by the Chief Judge, Justice Marshal Umukoro paid him a courtesy visit in commemoration of the 2015/16 legal year.

Senator Okowa said that the autonomy being sought by Judiciary Workers was in good faith but they must tarry awhile for the state to get a realistic budget as the present economic downturn in the country has made this year budget quite unrealistic.

"I have always said that l have nothing against the fiscal autonomy for the judiciary but it must be based on a budget that is workable, realistic but what we have found on ground is that the budgets we are running are not realistic.

"Until we start running a budget that is realistic and realizable it will be difficult to operate a system in which you say every amount of money that is appropriated in the budget has to be released, we will just be making a huge mistake and will be taken as a joke”, Governor Okowa said.

The Governor said that "in 2016, we will work within our limit to have a realistic and realisable budget, then I will release money to the Judiciary to spend on their own “.

The governor who said that the state government have a robust working relationship with the judiciary, promised to looking into their issues and called for speedy dispensation of justice

According to him " l am looking forward to a good relationship between government and the judiciary, I have a great respect for the Judicial arm of government as well as the legislative arm of government but those of us in the executive arm we take all the pains, l can tell you that by the special grace of God we have tried to manage the finances of the state in such a way that we have been able to keep the state afloat," he added

"I know that matters that concern the judiciary as much as it is humanly possible we will take it seriously because we are definitely working in constraint times." He added.

Senator Okowa urged the judges to attend to cases coming from government fairly and speedily asserting " I have also appealed to the chief judge that cases coming from the state government should be treated fairly and in line with the law because l have found that people have been going about defrauding government and believing that they could just quickly get bail and just come back to work and just resume their work.

"l have been working with the Office of the Head of Service to ensure that appropriate actions are taken but in situations where people just start to defraud the state government we cannot tolerate it, l thank God that some culprits have been reported and action has been taken and we will like to have speedy trials of such culprits so that they will not be in situations where they can corrupt other workers and make life more difficult for government." Senator Okowa noted.

He disclosed that government would provide the needs of the judiciary within available resources "I will take up the matter of security with the commissioner of police and we will see what can be done to ensure that armed personnel are provided. We will take this matter seriously because both in the courts and your residence l believe that you deserve to have some reasonable level of security"

Governor Okowa promised some level of support for the Prison Service in the state to help decongest the prisons and ensure that inmates were brought to courts as at when due stating " The state wide prison visit will give you a firsthand information on what is going on in the prisons and the number of people who await trial but from the picture that you have painted we are very worried because our prisons are overcrowded with inmates. "unfortunately we have all kinds of challenges that mitigate against being able to try people on time and eventually we are also not developing more and more prisons even when the population is growing even if the crime rate does not grow the population grows the number of persons will obviously grow in prison. We will see what we can do to offer some support."

Earlier, the State Chief Judge, Justice Marshal Umukoro informed the governor, they were on the visit to him as part of the activities to mark the opening of the 2015/16 legal year and commended him for the support of the state government to the judiciary.

While assuring of diligent performance of duty by the judges, Justice Umukoro highlighted some issues mitigating effective dispensation of justice in the State.