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.
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