Nigeria: Reform of Legal Aid and Assistance Delivery

Overview
This project seeks to facilitate a process of reform of legal aid and assistance delivery in Nigeria, increasing beneficiary coverage and improving resource utilization, through a partnership between the Legal Aid Council and the lawyering skills available from Nigeria's National Youth Service (NYSC) scheme.

The project will be undertaken in multiple phases, with the initial phase being supported by the Justice Initiative and subsequent phases contingent on the success of buy-in advocacy from additional sources. This project complements the Justice Initiative's police oversight projects in Nigeria.

Background
Few African countries have any official form of legal aid delivery. A rare example of state-sponsored legal aid in Africa exists in Nigeria where a Legal Aid Council has existed as a statutory body empowered since 1974 to support the provision of legal assistance to indigent defendants in criminal cases and, latterly, to victims of human rights violations. Ridiculously low means thresholds, inadequate state funding, personnel shortages and poor strategy have all contributed to limit the effectiveness of this mechanism. In the absence, until recently, of a credible Legal Aid Council, non-governmental entities have mostly attempted to fill the gap in the provision of legal aid and assistance. The current Director-General of the Council has sought, with a measure of success, to remedy the credibility gap in the operations of the Council. As a result, the Council has developed an effective para-legal strategy to complement its criminal judicare strategy. It is also establishing effective liaison with the legal aid and services NGOs. The development strategy of the Legal Aid Council is however, undermined by persistent understaffing leading to limited beneficiary and area coverage.

Nigeria produces about 3,000 (three thousand) lawyers per annum, nearly all of whom are required under Nigerian law to perform a year long period of "national service" administered by the Directorate of the National Youth Service Corps. An overwhelming majority of these lawyers are deployed in private practice. This project aims to place a significant number of the lawyers from the Youth Service Corps at the disposal of the Legal Aid Council for the purpose of broadening access to legal aid and strengthening the mechanisms for legal aid delivery.

The project comprises advocacy and pilot components. Activities under the advocacy dimension include a two-day stakeholder consultation on reform of legal aid delivery involving the Legal Aid Council and the NYSC Directorate. The consultation will be designed to enlist multi-sector participation in legal aid delivery from both traditional supporters (such as the legal profession), non-traditional sources (such as the police and the private sector) and bilateral/multi-lateral donor expertise and interest. It is proposed to develop from this consultation a mechanism for co-ordination among both state and voluntary-sector legal aid providers in Nigeria under a Legal Aid/Assistance Consultative Committee/Council. This Committee will be the vehicle for advocating for enhanced resources for legal aid in the country.

The pilot prong of the project is to be developed initially in four locations around Nigeria, including the headquarters of the Legal Aid Council in Abuja. This will involve the enlistment, training and deployment of up to eighty NYSC lawyers in four different locations to provide legal advice, counseling and representation. The location of such deployments will include police stations, offices of local government and, possibly, customary and Magistrates' courts, all locations notorious for egregious violations in the Nigerian context. The returns of caseload from these locations will be monitored and evaluated at the end of nine months for effectiveness of the intervention offered. If successful, it is proposed to use the advocacy vehicle under this project to ensure the leveraging of additional resources for an expansion of the reach and coverage of the project.