THE Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Ibrahim Auta, has called the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to partner the National Judicial Institute (NJI) on educating state high court judges on the several aspects of business law.

Justice Auta observed that the state high court judges, who are usually promoted to the court of appeal, are not very familiar with business law and that it was affecting the quality of judgments on cases with the subject matter.

The Chief Judge expressed his view when the NBA-Section of

Business Law (SBL) paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja to intimate him of its upcoming yearly conference slated for June 17 to 19, 2013 in Lagos.

“It is good to partner NJI because judges coming from the states may not have adequate knowledge of business law and because often times these state high court judges are promoted to the court of appeal, and when they climb there, they may not understand all these cases relating to the sector. This is dangerous because the tendency of

miscarriage of justice is there”, Auta stated.

CJ Auta assured that his brother judges will be handy to grace the

occasion, adding that in any way the organisers want his court to participate, he is ready including to give resource persons for the

programme.

“We are always ready when it comes to issues under our jurisdiction. At all times, we would want to partner business associations and we are not going to stop. We are going to send more judges because the conference is a form of continuing education and this is better for the bench and the bar so that they can interact and understand themselves better on issues relating to business law.

“It is apt because often times when cases on business law come up, either the lawyer or the judge do not understand the issues, and that is a problem. We will give any support to this programme. Anything you need from us including resource persons, we are ready to give”,

Justice Auta assured.

Earlier in his address, Chairman of the NBA-Section of Business Law,

Mr. Gbolahan Elias (SAN), told the honourable CJ that their trip to

Abuja to see him is to appeal to him to allow as many as possible of his judges should honour their programme.

The NBA delegation also revealed that they have paid a similar visit to the administrator of the NJI, Justice Umaru Eri, and his response was highly encouraging.

“The section is to focus on issues in the sector and show competence.

We will be looking on issues of intellectual property, banking, oil and gas, capital market. We will be running the programme like a classroom section for business lawyers in the country”.