2024 Budget: Justice ministry significantly slashes amount to prosecute Boko Haram suspects

The federal government has proposed N210.6 million for the prosecution of Boko Haram cases in the year 2024, a remarkable reduction in the allocations for prosecuting suspected terrorists despite a backlog of terrorism cases in the two previous years.

The allocation, contained in the first full-year budget proposal of President Bola Tinubu‘s administration, is significantly lower than the amount allocated in the 2022 and 2023 appropriations of the immediate-past administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In 2022, the government voted N500 million for the mass prosecution of suspected members of the terrorist group, who had been incarcerated at military detention facilities over the years.

The trial took place in the military detention in Kainji area of Niger State under a special court arrangement of the Federal High Court. Under the arrangement, a handful of judges of the Federal High Court presided over the trials of the suspects at the military detention facility. While the suspects were defended mostly by lawyers from the government’s Legal Aid Council of Nigeria, they were prosecuted by lawyers from the Federal Ministry of Justice.

The special arrangement was first adopted in September 2017 to fast-track the prosecution of the suspects in years-long detention and avoid the burden of heavy logistical problems that moving the suspects to regular courts around the country would have caused.

In the outgoing year, the government similarly appropriated N500 million for the trial of Boko Haram cases, but the mass trial did not take place. The government has rather continued pursuing individual cases scattered in different divisions of the Federal High Court around the country. On 4 December, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, led a team of prosecutors to the trial of some terrorism suspects in Abuja.

The stalled mass prosecution of the suspected terrorists has been blamed on insecurity in Niger State, an official of the Federal Ministry of Justice who asked not to be named, told PREMIUM TIMES.

Since the commencement of the mass trial programme of Boko Haram suspects in September 2017, three phases of the exercise have been held. The fourth phase has been stalled.

In the 2024 appropriation bill at the National Assembly, the government has proposed spending N210.6 million (N210,578,732 in total) on the trial of Boko Haram and terrorism cases. The budget item was tagged “ongoing”. The reason for the reduction in the amount of allocation is not clear.

However, a new budget item similar to the trial of Boko Haram suspects is titled ‘Prosecution of criminal cases and other related matters,’ and will cost the government N230.6 million.

The justice ministry intends to spend N5.3 billion for capital expenditure, and N8.8 billion for recurrent expenditure in the proposed 2024 budget, the Minister of Justice told the Senate Committee on Judiciary at the ongoing budget defence proceedings in Abuja.

Mr Fagbemi noted that the process of prosecution of terror suspects “entails considerable funding inclusive of catering for the logistics and welfare of prosecutors, support staff, witnesses, and provision of security for the trial.

“In order to ensure the security and confidence of the judicial officers coupled with the location of the trial, the ministry is required to deploy enormous resources for transportation and other logistics. The ministry is also spending considerable resources on provision or upgrading of infrastructural facilities at the various venues to make them fit for purpose,” the minister said earlier this month.

In 2023, the ministry was allocated N3.3 billion for capital expenditure and N4.6 billion for recurrent expenditure.

Reviewing the 2023 budget performance of the ministry, Mr Fagbemi told the lawmakers that with about two weeks to the end of the budget cycle, the ministry had only received N617 million for capital expenditure and N2.734 billion for recurrent expenditure, a situation he said impacted negatively on the ministry’s performance.

“In the outgoing budget cycle for 2023, the ministry was allocated N3,321,283.533.00 as Capital Budget and N4.7 billion (N4,688,847,054) as recurrent budget.

“At the moment, and with about two weeks to the end of the financial year, the ministry has only had releases of N617,456,896.00 for capital expenditure and N2,734,110,775.62 for recurrent expenditure. The foregoing has greatly constrained the performance of the Ministry in its mandate areas.”

Mr Fagbemi hopes there will be an improvement in the release of funds for the 2024 fiscal year.