By Jude Atupulazi
The Anambra State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Professor Sylvia Ifemeje, has bagged the ”Amazon of the Frontline Bar” Award, courtesy of the Aguata Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA.
The award, presented during the 2024 Law Week of the association, was in recognition of the Justice Commissioner’s positive support, hospitality and motivation to the Bar.
Receiving the honour and dedicating same to Governor Chukwuma Soludo, Professor Ifemeje announced that the end-to-end full automation of the 31 High Courts in Anambra and the Ministry of Justice, when completed by the end of the year, would make the state the first to achieve such feat in Nigeria’s justice sector.
She stated that innovative, disruptive and transformative projects going on in the state justice sector were in line with Governor Soludo’s promise of expeditious dispensation of justice.
Other achievements of the state government in the justice sector, according to the Commissioner, included solar installation in all the High Courts, Court of Appeal, Federal High Court and Court of Appeal in Anambra, as well as all four Correctional Service Centres in the state.
She recalled that the Soludo Administration had equally deployed virtual hearing facilities in all the High Courts and four Correctional Service Centres in the state, and had also embarked on massive renovation of all the Ministry of Justice Outstations in Nnewi, Awka, Onitsha, and Otuocha.
Earlier, while welcoming participants to the event, the Chairman of the Aguata Branch of the NBA, Victor Ezeonwumelu, noted that the Law Week, which had been a biennial celebration in the branch, was not held since after that of 2020 due insecurity within and around the Old Aguata Region of the state, reason he commended Governor Chukwuma Soludo for doing a lot to redress the situation.
Noting that the Aguata Branch had since inception continued its search for a revolutionizing role for the law profession in the seemingly impracticable task of reshaping and re-routing the Nigerian Nation through rich and robust in-depth lectures, Barrister Ezeonwumelu explained that the 2024 Law Week with the theme, “Interrogating the Judicial Responses to the application of ICT as a Panacea to Electoral Malpractices in Nigeria”, was yet another modest contribution to what she called the Nigerian Project.
He congratulated award recipients at the event, and challenged them to continually justify the honours bestowed on them by further investment in integrity and industry in the years ahead.
