The United Kingdom’s renewed national debate on whether its jury-trial system requires sweeping reform has reopened one of the fundamental questions of modern jurisprudence: should the fate of an accused person rest in the hands of ordinary citizens or trained judicial officers alone? While Britain wrestles with the refinement of a centuries-old democratic institution, Nigeria faces a more existential dilemma. Having abolished jury trials in the 1960s, Nigeria now operates a fully judge-driven system, one that has, over time, become synonymous with delay, inconsistency, and public distrust. The contrast between the two systems is telling. The UK asks how to update an old safeguard; Nigeria has long functioned without one and is paying an institutional price that is becoming impossible to ignore.
“When judges, rather than a cross-section of the public, determine both the facts and the verdict, the legitimacy of the system rests entirely on the perceived integrity of those judges.”
Juries in England emerged from mediaeval attempts to limit the arbitrary power of the Crown. The early practice, where twelve local men shared knowledge of disputes, evolved into a more refined system where citizens evaluated evidence and delivered verdicts independent of the state. This transformation established a civic principle that still underpins British justice today: the legitimacy of punishment requires the moral assent of the community.
By the eighteenth century, juries were no longer simply legal instruments; they had become cultural emblems of democratic oversight. Jurors represented the conscience of the people, a critical buffer against state abuse, and have acquitted political dissidents, frustrated unjust prosecutions, and protected individuals from governmental overreach. Their role has never been to achieve perfect technical accuracy but to prevent perfect authoritarianism.
Today, however, the UK confronts pressures that would have been unimaginable to its early jurists. Complex financial crimes, digital evidence, sophisticated forensic science, and sprawling organised-crime networks challenge the traditional lay-jury model. Critics argue that many jurors lack the expertise required to digest such information. Others point to issues of cost, lengthy trial durations, risks of jury tampering, and inconsistent verdicts. As a result, some propose the expansion of judge-only trials, especially for high-risk or highly technical cases.
But defenders of the institution insist that these criticisms, though valid, miss the larger point. The jury remains Britain’s strongest democratic circuit breaker. Its imperfections are the imperfections of democracy itself—messy, unpredictable, but fundamentally grounded in public participation. At its core, the jury is not merely a tool for fact-finding but a check on concentrated authority.
It is precisely here that the Nigerian comparison becomes most illuminating. Nigeria abolished jury trials shortly after independence, partly due to colonial suspicion, ethnic dynamics, and concerns about the competence and neutrality of laypersons. Judges, trained, professional, and often admirable, became the sole arbiters of both fact and law. But the choice, though administratively convenient, has left Nigeria with a system heavily dependent on a judiciary that struggles with public legitimacy.
Recent surveys by Afrobarometer, Transparency International, and the CLEEN Foundation have all placed the Nigerian judiciary among the least trusted public institutions. The reasons are well-known: chronic delays, opaque processes, allegations of judicial bribery, political interference, contradictory judgements, and the notorious issue of “forum shopping”, where litigants manoeuvre to secure favourable courts or judges. It is not uncommon for defendants to languish in pre-trial detention for years because their cases cannot find courtroom time. These are not simply bureaucratic inconveniences. They are structural failures with stark human consequences. Unfortunately, the absence of jury trials deepens that systemic fragility.
When judges, rather than a cross-section of the public, determine both the facts and the verdict, the legitimacy of the system rests entirely on the perceived integrity of those judges. Yet the reputation of the Nigerian judiciary has been repeatedly battered by high-profile controversies. Electoral disputes form some of the most glaring examples. In many gubernatorial and legislative cases, judicial decisions, however legally defensible, are routinely interpreted through the lens of politics rather than law. A verdict delivered by a solitary judge is easily dismissed as partisan; a verdict delivered by twelve ordinary Nigerians reflecting the nation’s demographic diversity would be far harder to delegitimise.
The weaknesses become even clearer when one considers recent historical examples. The aftermath of the EndSARS protests offered one of the clearest illustrations of public estrangement from the justice system. As victims of police brutality pursued legal redress, many Nigerians felt the judicial process lacked moral proximity to their experience. Court proceedings were procedural rather than empathetic and technical rather than reflective of public outrage. A lay jury, drawn from the same communities that witnessed police excesses, might not only have evaluated evidence differently but would have carried moral authority that Nigeria’s courts so often lack.
Similarly, Nigeria’s chronic corruption trials, many dragged out over a decade, regularly yield outcomes that the public finds implausible. When influential political or business elites are acquitted on technical grounds, Nigerians rarely interpret these decisions as evidence of innocence. Instead, they see them as reflections of power dynamics within the judiciary. A jury system, where elite defendants must persuade a room of ordinary citizens with no political dependencies, could have tempered this perception and produced outcomes that resonate more authentically with public expectations.
Cases involving communal violence, sectarian clashes, or parochial tensions offer additional insight. In a nation as ethnically and religiously diverse as Nigeria, the identity of the judge often becomes part of the narrative. When a judge belongs to a different group from either victims or defendants, suspicion – not necessarily grounded in fact – shadows the verdict. A multi-ethnic jury, deliberately selected to reflect Nigeria’s pluralism, could quiet these tensions and produce judgements perceived as more equitable.
Read also: The judiciary and the future of Nigeria’s democracy
These examples highlight a deeper issue: Nigerians do not merely distrust judicial outcomes; they distrust the judicial process itself. The justice system feels distant, elite-driven, insulated from public scrutiny, and often unmoored from societal values. A jury system could bridge this fracture. It would bring the public into the courtroom, not as spectators but as participants whose lived experiences and ethical intuitions matter in the determination of guilt or innocence.
To be sure, jury trials are no cure-all panacea. Nigeria’s complex ethnic landscape raises legitimate worries about bias. Security risks, particularly in cases involving powerful state and non-state actors, present genuine challenges. And ordinary citizens may struggle with cases involving intricate financial crimes. But these are administrative, not existential, problems. They can be addressed through structured reforms: trained professional jurors, mixed panels of judges and citizens, anonymised juries for high-risk trials, or restricting jury trials to certain categories such as homicide, police brutality, corruption, and political violence.
Britain’s jury debate is rooted in the luxury of choice: it asks how to refine a system historically tied to the country’s democratic identity. Nigeria, by contrast, must confront whether it has lost a core democratic instrument altogether. The deeper question is: what is the purpose of justice? If justice is merely the correct application of statute to fact, then trained judges alone may suffice. But if justice is also the earning of public trust, the balancing of societal values, and the acknowledgement of community conscience, then a judge-only system is structurally insufficient. Justice must not only be done; it must be believed.
A justice system that functions without the active participation of its citizens risks becoming an administrative machine: technically competent yet socially illegitimate. A limited reintroduction of jury trials could serve as Nigeria’s path to restoring confidence, diffusing judicial power, and creating a justice architecture that reflects the people it serves.
As Britain debates how best to modernise its juries, Nigeria must consider something more foundational: how to democratise justice itself. Efficiency may improve case flow, but only legitimacy sustains the rule of law. The absence of juries – once dismissed as a procedural footnote – has evolved into a structural deficiency. If Nigeria seeks a judiciary that commands respect rather than suspicion, it must find ways to return citizens to the centre of justice.
Dr Hani Okoroafor is a global informatics expert advising corporate boards across Europe, Africa, North America, and the Middle East. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of BusinessDay. Reactions are welcome at doctorhaniel@gmail.com.
