The Committee set up by the National Judicial Council, NJC, headed by Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour, has come up with guidelines and measures to enable safe court sittings during the COVID-19 pandemic period.
This was contained in a statement by the Director of information, Soji Oye, on Thursday.
The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, in a circular directed to all Heads of Court across the federation, urged them to abide by the rules, directives, and guidelines.
Among the guideline issued is that Heads of Courts shall liaise with relevant security agencies to ensure that the entrances to court premises are well manned by security personnel and entry into the premises are regulated.
Every person wishing to go into the court premises without exception, shall be subjected to the temperature monitor reading for the determination of his or her body temperature and wearing of face mask is mandatory.
Physical sittings by courts in courtrooms is also being discouraged by Justice Muhammad during this COVID-19 period.
Such physical court sittings must be limited only to time bound, extremely urgent, and essential matters that may not be heard by the court remotely or virtually.
Where the courts must conduct or hold a physical courtroom sitting or hearing, the courts must be dis-infect before sitting.
On filling of court processes, parties should scan and exchange their filed processes in PDF format by Email with the other parties in the proceedings and this would be without prejudice to the statutorily required service by the courts.
The PDF format of the filed processes must also show evidence of payment of the filing fees .
Where there is no electronic filing system and pending the institution of such electronic filing systems, hardcopy, manual filings at the court registries shall continue to be the default filing process for litigants .