EXPLORING THE BENEFITS OF PRE-TRIAL CONFERENCE PROCEDURE TO JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS IN NIGERIA (Published)
There has been great concern accross the world over the slow pace of judicial proceedings. The fear in many quarters is that this problem could ultimately defeat the very purpose of adjudication, to wit, dispensation of substantial justice. As a consequence, the pretrial conference procedure has evolved as way of preventing unnecessary delays in judicial proceedings/ This procedure has been adopted in Nigeria with so many pitfalls. This paper attempts a review of the extent to which the procedure has been put to use by the Nigerian courts. The paper also assesses the benefits accruable to the Nigerian judicial system by an efficcient application of the procedure. In view of the fact that the world has become a global village, a comparative analysis of the use of the procedure by different countries of the world is also made in this paper. At the end, the paper recommends a way foward in the application of the pretrial conference procedure in Nigerian judicial proceedings.
Keywords: Case management conference (C.M.C.), Final Status Conference (F.M.C.), Pretrial Order, Pretrial conferencce