Awaiting Trial for Years: The Hidden Human Cost of Judicial Delays

In Nigeria, the phrase “awaiting trial” has quietly become a sentence in itself. Thousands of individuals remain in custodial centres for years, sometimes for periods longer than the maximum punishment for the offences they are accused of, without a judicial determination of guilt. This phenomenon represents one of the most persistent human rights failures within Nigeria’s criminal justice system. 

Available data consistently show that over two-thirds of persons in Nigerian correctional facilities are awaiting trial, rather than serving sentences after conviction. This imbalance reflects systemic delays at every stage of the criminal process: police investigation, prosecutorial review, judicial scheduling, and correctional logistics.

A recent statistical analysis of 2025 data from the Nigerian Correctional Service underscores the scale of the crisis. Out of more than 81,000 inmates nationwide, approximately 67% were pre-trial detainees, confirming that custodial centres are functioning less as post-conviction institutions and more as holding warehouses for unresolved cases.

What is even more troubling is the sheer length of time many of these cases may go on without substantive procedural developments. Despite constitutional guarantees that trials should be concluded within reasonable periods of time, cases often drag on for many years with minimal progress being made. 

The Human Cost Behind the Numbers

Judicial delay is often discussed in technical or administrative terms like backlogs, adjournments, DPP advice, case management, etc. Yet behind these abstractions lie profound human consequences.

At a stakeholder dialogue organised by CELSIR to commemorate International Human Rights Day, lived experiences brought these consequences into sharp relief. One beneficiary recounted enduring over forty adjournments without his case ever being heard, eventually securing discharge after years of lost liberty, only because the complainant in the matter withdrew their complaint. Unfortunately, stories like these are not exceptional.

Prolonged pre-trial detention erodes:

• Presumption of innocence, as detainees are punished before conviction 
• Mental and physical health, due to uncertainty and overcrowded conditions 
• Family and economic stability, as breadwinners disappear into legal limbo 
• Public confidence, as justice appears arbitrary and inaccessible

Structural Drivers of Delay: An Interlocking Systemic Failure

Evidence from civil society organisations, judicial officers, prosecutors, and correctional authorities converges on one central conclusion: Nigeria’s crisis of prolonged pre-trial detention is not the product of a single institutional failure, but of mutually reinforcing dysfunctions across the criminal justice chain. Each actor’s weakness amplifies the others, producing delay as a structural outcome rather than an aberration.

1. Investigative Inefficiencies and Over-Reliance on Remand

At the front end of the system, policing practices continue to prioritise custodial remand over diligent investigation. Arrests are frequently made before investigations are completed, with detention used as a substitute for forensic capacity, witness tracing, or intelligence development. Remand orders—especially at the Magistrate Court level—have become routine administrative tools rather than exceptional safeguards.

This investigative deficit is compounded by weak case screening. Suspects are remanded on holding charges even where evidence is tenuous or purely civil in character. Once remanded, investigative urgency often dissipates, as the suspect’s physical custody reduces institutional pressure to conclude investigations expeditiously. In effect, remand has displaced investigation as the default mode of criminal process initiation.

2. Chronic Delays in the Issuance of Prosecutorial Advice

The transition from police investigation to prosecution represents one of the most significant bottlenecks. The issuance of legal advice by Directors of Public Prosecutions (DPPs)—a constitutional safeguard intended to prevent weak or abusive prosecutions—has become a major source of delay.

These delays are driven by a combination of under-resourcing, excessive caseloads, and poor inter-agency coordination. Files are often transmitted incompletely, repeatedly returned for “further investigation,” or left unattended for months or years. During this period, accused persons remain in custody, even though the State itself has not determined whether a prima facie case exists. Pre-trial detention thus persists in a legal vacuum, untethered to prosecutorial readiness.

3. Repeated Adjournments and Judicial Capacity Constraints

Within the courts, delay is institutionalised through repeated adjournments. Matters are stood down due to absent witnesses, unavailable prosecutors, or courts not sitting because of administrative constraints, transfers, or congested dockets. Trial courts—particularly Magistrate Courts—are burdened with volumes of cases far exceeding realistic adjudicatory capacity.

Critically, Nigerian procedural law provides few effective consequences for non-diligent prosecution. Cases may linger through dozens of adjournments without triggering dismissal, reinforcing a culture in which delay is cost-free to the State but devastating to the accused. The absence of firm judicial case management transforms adjournment from an exception into the norm.

4. Inadequate Legal Representation for Indigent Defendants

Perhaps the most decisive structural factor is the absence of timely, competent defence representation for indigent defendants. Without counsel, accused persons are less likely to apply for bail effectively, challenge unlawful remand, demand prosecutorial diligence, or invoke statutory timelines.

Legal Aid coverage remains uneven, and pro bono culture—while improving—has not reached sufficient scale. Many awaiting trial detainees navigate complex procedural terrain unrepresented, rendering constitutional rights largely theoretical. In this context, liberty becomes contingent on economic capacity, rather than legal merit.

The Justice for All Clearing House model demonstrated the systemic impact of correcting this single variable. By ensuring early and continuous access to competent defence lawyers, the initiative achieved measurable reductions in detention periods through bail, discharge for want of diligent prosecution, and accelerated trials. The lesson is clear: delay thrives most where defence advocacy is absent.

5. Logistical Constraints in Inmate Production

Finally, even where courts are willing and cases are ripe for hearing, logistical failures within the correctional system routinely frustrate progress. Inmate production is impeded by shortages of vehicles, fuel, personnel, and secure transport infrastructure. Accused persons are not brought to court through no fault of their own, yet adjournments are recorded against their cases.

This creates a perverse cycle in which detention is prolonged by the very institution responsible for custody, reinforcing the reality that physical incarceration, rather than judicial determination, becomes the operative determinant of an accused person’s status.

Pre-Trial Detention as De Facto Sentencing

Taken together, these failures produce a deeply troubling outcome: pre-trial detention functions as punishment without conviction. Individuals lose years of liberty in conditions indistinguishable from post-conviction imprisonment, despite the constitutional presumption of innocence and Nigeria’s obligations under international human rights law.

Delay, in this sense, is not merely procedural—it is punitive. It redistributes the burden of systemic inefficiency onto the most vulnerable defendants, converting administrative inertia into lived deprivation.

The evidence is unequivocal: where early investigation is diligent, prosecutorial advice timely, judicial control firm, defence representation effective, and logistics functional, detention periods collapse. The persistence of delay, therefore, reflects not inevitability, but institutional tolerance for a system in which time itself becomes the sentence.

Beyond Statistics: A Question of Dignity

Judicial delay is not merely an efficiency problem. Each year spent awaiting trial represents time taken from lives that may ultimately be found innocent, time that no acquittal can return.

As stakeholders at the 2025 Human Rights Day Dialogue affirmed, meaningful reform must move beyond rhetoric to coordinated action, strengthening prosecutorial accountability, expanding legal aid, enforcing time limits on remand, and centring human dignity in justice delivery.

Until then, the phrase, awaiting trial will remain one of the quietest but most devastating sentences imposed by Nigeria’s justice system.