THE Nigeria Supreme Court and other courts have rubbished a post-COVID-19 advisory issued in April by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN), asking the judiciary to jettison this year’s annual vacation.

Mr Abubakar Malami in the advisory statement issued by his media aide, Dr. Umar Gwandu, on April 2, 2020, stated that there was an urgent need “to adjust the judicial process to make for recovery of lost grounds occasioned by the lockdown.”

But findings by PUNCH showed that none of suggestions by Malami on how the courts could address backlog of cases piled up because of the COVID-19 restrictions was taken.

Apart from not sitting extra hours as suggested by the minister, the courts have also ignored the minister’s advisory for judges not to go on vacation and take the almost two months of court shutdown for about two months as their year 2020 holiday.

The Director of Information of the Supreme Court, Dr. Festus Akande, also confirmed on Tuesday that the Justices of the apex court started their annual vacation on Monday.

It was also confirmed that the Justices of the Court of Appeal would begin theirs before the end of July.

Already, the Federal High Court, through its Chief Registrar, Emmanuel Gakko, had already issued a public notice, announcing that “the honourable court’s vacation for the year 2020 shall commence on Monday, July 27, 2020 and would end on Friday, September 25, 2020”.

In line with the court’s tradition, Gakko said vacation courts which would “cater for cases of extreme urgency” only would hold in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt divisions.

But in what appeared to be an agreement with the AGF, the Jigawa State High Court has cancelled its 2019/2020 court long vacation.

The court stated in its Legal Notice No. 5 of 2020 signed by the Chief Judge of the state, Justice Aminu Ringim, and issued on July 3, 2020, that the cancellation was due to “the prolonged stay at home by the honourable judges without discharging their adjudicatory functions due to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

When PUNCH contacted, Malami’s Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Dr Umar Gwandu, said he would need to talk to the AGF on the development of courts embarking on annual vacation.