Police an Anambra Judiciary Trade Blames Over Delayed Trial Of Criminals

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The Police Commissioner in Anambra State, Usman Gwari, and the state Chief Judge, Peter Umeadi, on Tuesday, played the blame game over who is responsible for the delayed dispensation of criminal cases in the state.

Anambra State Governor, Willie Obiano, who was also present at the occasion, almost joined in the fray when he said in his speech that despite the much he has done to chase criminals out of the state “the challenge we have with the judiciary is the delay in dispensing with criminal justice, which is not safe”.

Obiano went on to point out that for the past three and a half years, no single or at most one kidnap case has been fully tried and dispensed in Anambra State and “most kidnappers are free walking in the streets of the state”.

The occasion was the: ‘Sensitization Workshop on the Practical Direction of the High Court for the Fast-tracking of Criminal Cases in the Anambra State Judiciary’, organised by the state Judiciary and was attended by the security outfits in the state.

Gwari fired the first salvo during a remark when he pointed out that he had served in Lagos State for more than 10 years but when he came to Anambra State, he discovered an alarming rate at which judges grant bail to suspected criminals brought before their court. This trend, he stated, could never occur in Lagos State.

He also said Anambra judges shy away from hearing criminal cases and would devote “six days of the week to civil cases and one day to criminal cases. Sometimes, when police seek advice from Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), they never get it until it is too late and when they charge suspected criminals to Magistrate Courts, they are remanded for a long time before the case is heard,” he added.

Umeadi then made a spirited defence, blaming the delays on handicaps, which had hampered the flow of prosecution in Anambra State.

According to him, Anambra judiciary lacked legal officers who were not recruited in the last eight years and those who were assigned cases did not show up in court for no plausible reasons. But he hoped that with recent recruitment, the situation will change.

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