Volunteers Justice Scheme: A Framework for Community Justice in the South-Western Nigeria

Abstract

The focus of the study is on how to improve the justice system in Nigeria by reducing court congestion and improving access to justice through community justice system. The issue of court congestion, delay in court processes, and the inaccessibility of the justice system to the poor and uneducated is affecting the sustainable peaceful co-existence and orderliness in Nigeria. The inability of government to sustainably fund the justice system is a clear pointer that there is need for a people-centered approach to reduce the burden on government and to increase accessibility. Therefore, adopting descriptive analysis method, and relying on relevant secondary data, the paper examines the pre-colonial traditional justice system in the Yorubaland (South-west, Nigeria), and post-traditional justice system in Nigeria to identify salient issues responsible for inefficiency and inaccessibility. In the process, the paper identifies community justice as an alternative justice system and proposed the Volunteers Justice Scheme (VJS) committee, which is a non-formal alternative dispute resolution mechanism, that relies on community trust, knowledge of their tradition, with little or no financial cost incurred, no technical legal requirements and time friendly; to be established in each of the wards at the local governments level, as a framework for the operation of community justice in South-western Nigeria. Among the essential for the scheme are enabling law, a coordinating center at the local government, stakeholders’ representatives to serve as volunteers, and identifying a public building in each of the wards as venues for the operation of the committee. Thus, for effective implementation of the Scheme, the study suggests constitutional amendment to integrate the Scheme into the justice system, mass education to mobilize citizens, and training of committee members for efficient operation.