MISTAKES OR OMISSIONS BY COURT OFFICIALS IN NIGERIAEFFECTS ON LITIGANTS AND EXCEPTIONS THERETO

Abstract

The position of the law and exceptions to the effect of mistakes or omissions made by Court officials on litigants has continued to generate endless objections in Court leading to waste of precious time of the Court. Given the frequency of this objection in the adjudicatory ecosystem, this paper deployed the doctrinal research method to examine decisions of Courts on variants of mistakes made by Court officials and the judicial attitude towards them. The paper established that as a general rule, mistakes of officials of Court are treated as mere administrative lapses that do not count against litigants. This is however subject to the exception that a litigant will bear the brunt if it is shown that he occasioned the mistake or connived or had full knowledge, encouraged, instigated, condoned, approved the said action or act. In order to reduce the frequency of this type of objections by aggrieved parties, it was recommended that the Rules of Court should be amended to expressly state that mistakes by Court officials are mere administrative irregularities. Furthermore, the Rules of Court should also contain circumstances when the act of a litigant that led to inadvertence or mistake of the Court official will count against the litigant.