DATA: Nigerian Judges Carry the Burden of 6 in South Africa, 50 in the UK

In five years, the hearing of the 15 domestic workers of Nigeria’s former first lady, Patience Jonathan, has been adjourned 42 times in Bayelsa State. Their alleged crime was the theft of jewellery, air conditioners, flat-screen TVs, and furniture valued at N200 million. At least two more adjournments were recorded in June.

In the process, Ebiyerin Omukoro, the presiding judge, had been kidnapped. The court shut down in solidarity, and no new days have been assigned as of the time of this report. This was the type of situation that made judicial leaders in the world meet sometime in March 2024 in the small island nation of Nauru to determine the state of the global judiciary.

At this meeting, these leaders signed the Nauru Declaration on Judicial Well-being and declared July 25th of every year as the International Day for Judicial Well-being.

The day was supposed to highlight the strain on judges around the world. The basis for the decision was some not-so-friendly numbers reported by the Global Integrity Network.

According to the findings at the time, 76% of judges lacked enough time for their own physical or mental health; 92% experienced stress regularly; 83% reported inadequate institutional support; 97% agreed judicial well‑being needed more attention.

READ MORE: 42 Adjournments Later, Patience Jonathan’s Aides Languish in Jail as Court Case Drags On

Situations like this and the consequences are closer to home for Nigerians than for any other group of people. In this report, FIJ looked at the numbers to show how much of a dire situation the country is in, relative to the even larger global population, which also included the judges who screamed overwork in 2024.

This is in commemoration of the Judicial Well-being Day.

HOW MANY JUDGES DOES NIGERIA HAVE?

The total number of judges and judicial officers in Nigeria is not published in a single, unified official source, unlike the other examples Nigeria will be compared with in this report.

To circumvent this problem, FIJ pieced together from recent reports official court announcements and verified publications from 2022 to 2025.

At the top of the hierarchy, the Supreme Court of Nigeria reached its full statutory capacity of 21 justices in December 2023. This was confirmed in a report by Premium Times on December 16, 2023, which highlighted the appointment of the final batch of justices that completed the court’s complement.

The Court of Appeal, which operates across 21 divisions covering all six geopolitical zones, currently has around 67 justices, according to a March 2024 article by FactCheck Ghana, which cited the official Court of Appeal website listing 67 serving justices at the time.

But a 2024 Premium Times report put the total number of Court of Appeal judges at 88, after new appointments.

Moving down to the Federal High Court, the number of judges stood at 75 in 2021. However, following the appointment of 23 additional judges in 2023, the total rose to about 94.

This figure was reported in a Premium Times article published on December 27, 2023, which covered the redeployment of all judges across the court’s various divisions.

The National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN), which handles employment and labour matters, has 33 judges, according to its official website. Similarly, the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, is reported to have 66 judges as of April 2025.

For the 36 states and the FCT combined, a 2022 report by the Nigerian Tribune provided the most reliable national breakdown: 846 judges served at the state level, while 283 operated at the federal level.

A Tribune report, published on April 5, 2022, titled Nigeria Has 1,129 Judges in Federal, State Courts – NJC, quoted figures from the National Judicial Council (NJC).

Other tiers, such as the Customary and Sharia Courts of Appeal, are harder to track due to the lack of a consolidated national record.

As of 2025, at least 34 judges are serving across eight Customary Courts of Appeal in Nigeria, and based on an average of four to five judges per court, the total number of judges across all 21 Customary Courts of Appeal nationwide is estimated to range between 84 and 105.

Nigeria has at least 52 Sharia Court judges, comprising one Grand Khadi and a minimum of three Khadis in each of the 13 jurisdictions (12 northern states and the FCT) that operate a Sharia Court of Appeal. The actual number is likely higher, as some states appoint more than the constitutional minimum.

As a result, Nigeria is estimated to have between 1,284 and 1,305 judges and judicial officers across all tiers of its judiciary.

SO HOW DOES NIGERIA COMPARE TO THE REST OF THE WORLD? VERY BADLY

Nigeria has a population of about 216 million people. With only around 1,300 judges, that works out to just six judges per million citizens.

That figure places Nigeria near the bottom globally.

By contrast, Ghana had 416 judges in 2023, according to a joint publication by Ghana’s Ministry of Finance and Judiciary. That same report indicated that Ghana’s judiciary received $38.8 million in public funding that year, translating to roughly 13 judges per million people.

Egypt, with a population closely mirroring Nigeria’s, reportedly had around 22,000 judges, according to the Middle East Monitor, a local media organisation. That gives Egypt nearly 200 judges per million people, more than 30 times Nigeria’s ratio.

Kenya had 1,653 judges in 2023/2024, according to the State of the Judiciary Report for that year. The Kenyan judiciary was funded with $171 million during the same fiscal period, giving the country about 30 judges per million people.

South Africa had 2,252 judges in 2024, according to its Judicial Service Commission. Civil society analysts reviewing the country’s fiscal numbers pegged its judiciary budget at $1.23 billion, providing about 36 judges per million South Africans.

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Uganda recorded 628 judges in 2023, according to the annual report of its judiciary. The Ugandan government allocated approximately $105.4 million to the judiciary that year. This puts its ratio at roughly 13 judges per million people.

India, one of the largest democracies in the world, had about 23,790 judges in the 2024/2025 judicial year. That works out to about 17 judges per million Indians. The judiciary’s spending, as far as its Ministry of Justice is concerned, was pegged at around $815 million.

The United Kingdom, according to its government had about 19,000 judges and a judiciary budget of $16.92 billion in 2024. That means nearly 300 judges per million citizens, the highest ratio on this list.

READ ALSO: ANALYSIS: In the Name of the President, the Senate and the Judiciary, the Constitution Is Under Attack

CASES ARE PILING FAST

By early 2024, Nigeria’s superior courts (excluding the Supreme Court) were sitting on 243,253 unresolved cases. Nearly 200,000 were civil, and another 43,000 were criminal, according to Benjamin Kalu, the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Federal High Court in Abuja alone entered its new legal year in July 2024 with 155,969 pending cases up from about 152,000 the year before.

In 2023, Monica Dongban-Mensem, President of the Court of Appeal, cried out about case backlogs of more than 39,000 matters. The FCT courts, across magistracy and appellate levels, carried nearly 200,000 files between them.

A 2024 report by the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL), titled Justice Needs and Satisfaction in Nigeria, estimated that around 68 million legal problems remained unresolved across the country.

The study, based on data from over 6,500 Nigerians, found that the unresolved issues cut across land disputes, domestic violence, family conflicts and neighbour disagreements.

The report showed that as of the first survey wave in 2023, 61 million legal problems were still ongoing, indicating widespread barriers to lasting justice.

At the current rate, it would take more than a decade to clear the docket. But thousands are filed every day.

CORRUPTION GROWS WHERE JUSTICE SLOWS

Delayed justice, aside from causing denied rights, also creates black market systems. A 2023 survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that Nigerians paid N721 billion in bribes to public officials that year.

The judiciary topped the list with the highest average bribe per person. Beyond the greed of judges, this is reflective of desperation on the part of the parties in court.

When trials take ten years, and court dates are shuffled like playing cards, the parties seek influence through bribery or resort to anything to get out of judicial purgatory.

READ ALSO: Kekere-Ekun Shares Plan to ‘Deal With Senior Lawyers’ Condemning Judiciary in the Media

Globally, more than 90% of judges say their work causes serious psychological stress, according to UNODC. Some countries have responded to this crisis.

In 2024, Ireland launched a Judicial Well-being Strategy to cut workload, introduce wellness leave, offer peer support and acknowledge burnout as a real threat.

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