Wednesday, 19 May 2021: The trend in the judiciary throughout the world since the advent of the pandemic, novel coronavirus otherwise called Covid-19 is for courts to sit, hears, and delivers rulings and judgments virtually.

But, this is not the case with many courts in Nigeria especially the Federal High Court where CEOAFRICA gathered that it is still scrambling to catch up with the trend of adoption of virtual hearing amid the closure of physical courts during the ongoing judiciary workers’ nationwide strike as well as the emerging novel coronavirus.

We gathered that the court is being hampered by lack of fund to embark on virtual operation. Also, our sources said that the funding problem is attributed to the yearly fall in the court’s allocations.

CEOAFRICA understands that the Federal High Court is among many Nigerian courts that still sparingly embrace virtual hearing despite putting in place the COVID-19-motivated practice directions recognising remote proceedings since last year.

This online newspaper learnt that the Chief Judge of the court, John Tsoho, had directed his colleagues to deliver judgements via virtual court sitting while the judiciary workers’ strike which entered its seventh week on Tuesday, lingers.

But the court told this reporter that it could not fully join the trend being adopted by other courts due to paucity of fund.

The court’s Chief Information Officer, Catherine Nwandu, said lack of funds had hampered the installation of virtual court facilities across all its jurisdictions.

Mrs Nwandu, however, said the court’s divisions in Abuja, Kano, Lagos, and Port-Harcourt had been delivering judgements through virtual proceedings.

According to her, “Our judges have been delivering judgements via virtual court proceedings while the strike lingers, but where we have Internet facilities are Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt and Kano Divisions.

“Because of lack of funds, the rest of the court’s divisions cannot sit virtually. We are still trying to cope with essential needs; because of financial constraint, we decided to look at Abuja, Lagos, Port-Harcourt and Kano jurisdictions”.