The Supreme Court has started the process of appointing eight judges to join its severely depleted bench.
Mr Maikyau, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria , in his email, urged interested and suitably qualified lawyers from the regions with openings on the Supreme Court bench to submit their expression of interest to the NBA secretariat in Abuja on or before 21 June. However, even with the regional balance consideration, all regions never get to have equal representatives on the bench of various courts at the end of any round of appointment. The criteria for determining which region has a vacant slot to fill is not publicly known.Currently, the South-east and the North-central regions, with one slot each, are the least represented on the Supreme Court bench. The three most represented regions have three each.
Last year, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Onomigbo Okpoko, criticised the geographical spread consideration in appointment to the Supreme Court and other federal establishments as “the foundation for mediocrity and incompetence.” In the history of Nigeria, only Teslim Elias and Augustine Nnamani have had the opportunity to rise directly from the bar to the Supreme Court bench.In response to then acting CJN, Walter Onnoghen’s request for nomination, the NBA then led by Abubakar Mahmoud, had forwarded the names of nine lawyers for appointment as Justices of the Supreme Court.