POST-ELECTION LITIGATIONS AND JUDICIAL INTEGRITY IN NIGERIA’S FOURTH REPUBLIC
Keywords:
Adjudication, Credibility, Judiciary, JudgmentAbstract
The background to the study acknowledged the indispensability of credible election outcomes in a democratic government. fundamentally, this study set out to investigate the elusiveness of the realisation of credible adjudication of post-election petitions in Nigeria’s fourth republic, as well as the reasons for the inability of the Judiciary to live up to expectation in this regard. Hence, the study critically examined the extent to which judicial integrity has been instrumental in the achievement of credible resolution of post-election litigations in Nigeria’s fourth republic. The study invariably linked the unavoidable essence of judicial integrity to the realisation of the above objective. The study relied on secondary sources for data collection and used content analysis for data presentation, interpretation and analysis. The Institutional Integrity Theory on which this study was anchored, demonstrated the relevance of integrity as a cardinal virtue that promotes competence, effectiveness and excellence in public institutions like the Judiciary. This study, through several kinds of literature reviewed, revealed that poor integrity syndrome in the Nigerian Judiciary which has over time frustrated the actualisation of credible resolution of post-election litigations in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic is responsible for public perception of the Judiciary as a corrupt institution. The study also discovered that some factors bordering on weak judicial autonomy, political interference, etc. are responsible for the decadent level of integrity in the Nigerian judicial system. The study, therefore, recommended among other things, a deliberate but determined attempt at sanitizing the judicial system, with a view to solving head-long, and the problem of integrity crisis in the Nigeria Judiciary
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