JIGAWA STATE COUNSEL URGE TO MAINTAIN QUALITY LEGAL RESEARCH, CALL ON STALKHOLDERS TO RECONSIDER CURRENT PRACTICE OF TRIAL-WITHIN-TRIAL.
The call was made by the Honourable Commissioner for Commerce and former Attorney-General of Kano State Ibrahim Mukhtar Esq. He made the statement while delivering a paper titled “Trial-Within-Trial as Criminal Procedure in the 21st Century” during the State Ministry of Justice One-Day Training held on Friday the 11th March, 2022 at Manpower Development Institute (MDI) Dutse.
Mr Mukhtar raised some thought-provoking issues concerning trial within-trial in criminal trials,he said “it is high time for the procedure in determining the voluntariness of the extrajudicial statement of the defendant to be changed. He added that it will serve the interest of justice for a ruling of the voluntariness of the statement to be deferred till judgment after the mini-trial had been conducted, since in the extant practice, the arbiter is a judge of law and facts unlike what is obtained in England. Deferment of the ruling according to him will save time and resources.
The second speaker, Associate Professor Dahiru Jafar Usman, Provost, Kano State Anti-Corruption Commission Training Institute in a plea, called state government to reward outstanding commitment to work by promoting hardworking lawyers. He also urge the state counsel in the Ministry to justify the taxpayers’ money spent on them by conducting quality legal research, in which the outcome of the researchcan be used in discharging their responsibilities within and outside the courtroom.
Honourable Attorney-General/Commissioner for Justice Dr Musa Adamu Aliyu on his part also reminded the counsel to always work hard and to be efficient and transparent in their job. He further said that, the rationale behind the lectures organized by the Ministry is to enhance the capacity of the state counsel to excel in the performance of their official duties,adding that the state government is ready to do everything possible to ensure state counsel in Jigawa State excel among their peers in the country.
In his remarks, the Solicitor-General/Permanent-Secretary Ministry of Justice, Barrister Lawan D. Baba thanked the presenters who sacrificed their time despite their tight schedules to give the insightful and thought-provoking lectures. He also thanked the Executive Governor Alhaji Muhammad Badaru Abubakar MON mni for the support he has been rendering to the Ministry of Justice to make sure the justice sector is working efficiently.
Signed
Zainab Baba
(Public Relations Officer)
Ministry of Justice, Dutse – Jigawa State.
14th March 2022
