DIVERSITY AND THE QUESTION OF MARGINALIZATION IN THE APPOINTMENT OF FEDERAL JUDICIAL OFFICERS AMONG THE THREE MAJOR TRIBES OF HAUSA, IGBO AND YORUBA IN NIGERIA

Diversity in the appointment of judges is vital in the administration of justice as it helps in instilling public confidence in the judiciary. Nigeria is a heterogeneous society with various ethnic and tribal groups. This paper looks at the approaches in the diversity of the appointment of judicial officers in Nigeria. The scope of the work is limited to the Federal Judicial Officers in Nigeria that are from the three major ethnic groups of Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. Those judges comprise of the legal practitioners and non-lawyers. There was a claim that persons of Igbo tribe extraction have been marginalised in the appointment of Federal Judicial Officers. This assertion is not correct as it has been found in this paper that there is a fair representation in the appointment of Federal Judicial Officers among the three major tribes. This work is structured into various parts. The first part of the paper is an introduction which concisely introduced the topic. In the second part of the work, literature about the diversity in the appointments of judges was reviewed. The article pointed to the fact that diversity in the selection of judges enhances public confidence in the judiciary. The third part of the paper is the findings. It is found that the appointing and recommending authorities for the appointment of the Federal Judicial Officers have a policy of ensuring inclusiveness in the selection of the judges. Qualitative research method has been used in accomplishing the work. The paper in the last part concludes by making suggestions that there is a need for the appointment to be more diverse and such appointments to be publicised. Limitation of the Article is that the data used in elucidating the spread of appointment of the judicial officers is limited to the nominal roll of the Federal Judicial Officers prepared by the Planning, Research and Statistics Department of the National Judicial Council as at 27th November, 2017.