An Appraisal of Administrative Justice and Good Governance in Nigeria

Abstract

Administrative justice is generally seen as a component of good governance. While the former has developed in Nigeria largely through the Common Law, the latter is a relatively emerging ideal that has eluded public administration in Nigeria. For decades, corruption and maladministration have become the central problems facing the country. The people have suffered and are still suffering from the consequences of poor governance. This article examines administrative justice as an element of good governance in Nigeria. It demonstrates that the problems are the results of misuse of administrative discretion at all levels of government and the lack of sufficient accountability mechanisms. Although efforts have been made to address these problems through legal and intitutional reforms, however, the problems still persist. Using these twin concepts of administrative justice and good governance, this article argues that the legal and institutional reforms undertaken to address the problems have not been effective because they failed to approach the problems from the 'inside-out'. The article partly attributes the failure of the reforms to the restrictive approach in administrative justice, a 'top-bottom' approach bequethed by the common law and incorporated into the general legal and constitutional arrangement in the country. While advocating for a 'bottom-up' approach which constrains the exercise of administrative discretion at all levels, from the individual 'street level bureaucrat' to the top government official, the article proposes the institutionalisation of democratic values of checks and balance, oppenness, transperancy and accountability in decision-taking such that official discretion may be reasonably constrained without jeopardising administrative efficiency.

The Innovative concept and Issues Concerning the Non-Custodial Sentence in Nigerian Criminal Justice System

“…It covers events that occur before, during, and after a criminal prosecution. Although different theories abound on the purpose of the criminal justice system, there exist five (5) primary and mostly recognized objectives of a justice system which include; (1) Retribution (Badamasiuy and Bello, 2013) (2) Deterrence (Hyden, 2015) (3) Rehabilitation (John and Musa, 2014), (4) Incapacitation (Ogunode, 2015) , and (5) Restoration (Oduntan and Oduntan, 2017) , i.e., restorative justice (Michael;. It must be noted that the criminal justice system is mainly retributive, it is primarily concerned with punishing and deterrence offenders.…”

The concept of rule of law and the notion of justice in the survival of the Nigerian State

“…Justice demands that freedom, equity and other basic rights be accorded and secured to human being to the greatest extent consistent with the common good (Bodemheimer, 1962). Justice is an essential indispensable core value in any organized, civilized human society (Badamasiuy & Bello, 2013). The functional importance of law should be to produce justice; justice has therefore been defined as that virtue which accepts every human being as person and not as a thing and then renders to each such person his or her due (Oputa, 1990).…”