By Naomi Sharang
Abuja – Out of the total sum of N100 billion budgeted for the Judiciary in the 2018 fiscal year, Federal High Courts across the country are to gulp N13.918 billion.
This is about N4bn above the total sum earmaked for Supreme Court .
Out of the lump sum, N1.3 billion was also projected for retirement benefits of former Chief Justices of Nigeria ( CJN)
These disclosures were made on Tuesday, by the Secretary of the National Judicial Council ( NJC) , Ahmed Gambo Saleh during their 2018 budget defence session before the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal matters.
Closely following the Federal High Courts in the 2018 budget estimates for the judiciary as contained in the documents submitted, was the Court of Appeal with N13.277billion and Abuja High Court of Justice with estimated total sum of NN10.231billion.
Others, Saleh said, are National Industrial Court N9.322billion, National Judicial Council N5.701billion, Customary Court of Appeal N4.065 billion, Sharia Court of Appeal N2.771billion, Federal Judicial Service Commission N3.098bn and Body of Benchers N3bn among others.
The NJC secretary added that the budget estimates also included N11.3bn estimated for state judicial officers consolidated salaries and overhead costs in addition to N4.1bn voted for pension and gratuity of Retired Federal Judicial officers .
He said that as a way of strengthening the war against corruption in the judiciary, a proposal of N581.3m was also captured in the budget estimates for initial take off and allowances of anti corruption committee members .
Speaking, the Chairman of the Committee, Sen. David Umaru however observed infractions in the N9.331 billion budget estimates of the Supreme Court as regards creation of anti corruption court .
The Committee Chairman and members said such an exercise was not known by the existing laws in the land , the consequences of which would make the N100m budgeted for that purpose to be moved to other items .
But the Chief Registrar of the apex court , Mrs Hadizatu Mustapha quickly withdrew the proposal by describing it as typographical error.(NAN)