Mediators oversee the mediation suggestions, reminding
participants of the rules before they begin [Femke van Zeijl/Al Jazeera].
In a country where court cases often last 10 years and
many suspects languish in jails, could mediation be a solution? The pastor used
the Bible to persuade her not to pay her children's school fees, but to invest
$1,500 in his friend's farm instead. "If you can't trust a pastor, who can
you trust?" the school director from Lagos asks. Now she wishes she
hadn't. For the past three years she has been chasing after her money; going to
court nine times already and spending the equivalent of $150 in lawyers' fees.
The farmer she has taken to court is just as unhappy.
When the police arrested him in 2013, he spent three weeks and four days in
Lagos' infamous Kirikiri prison before he was able to make bail. When he
returned to his farm, he discovered that his hens had stopped laying eggs.
"They're supposed to eat at seven in the morning so they can lay their
eggs, but I wasn't around to feed them," he sighs. Since then he has had
to appear in court every two or three months. The trip takes a day and costs
over $5, which has also hindered his farm.
For the past three years, the school director and the
farmer have been embroiled in a seemingly endless court case. Until this
morning. It is the last week of July, and Samuel Ilori Courthouse in Ogba, a
densely populated area on the Lagos mainland, has been transformed into a
modern day palaver house where hundreds of court cases are being heard by
mediators. For the entire week, there are no judges in this magistrates' court,
the docks remain empty and the opposing parties are instead gathered around a
table where they will try to resolve their conflict.
A case in mediation during Settlement Week at Samuel
Ilori Courthouse in Ogba [Femke van Zeijl/Al Jazeera].
"Do you want your money back, or do you want this
man in jail?" mediator Olayinka Oyelade asks the school director, pointing
at the farmer on the opposite side of the table. When she responds that she
does not wish prison upon anybody and that her priority is the money, the
mediator continues: "In that case, you'd better settle. When he ends up in
prison, you will get nothing. And if he has to go back and forth to court, he
cannot make the money to pay you back."
An alternative justice: The magistrate presiding over the
school director's case had referred it to the Lagos Multi-Door Courthouse
(LMDC), an organization specializing in mediation, which is growing
increasingly popular as an alternative way to resolve conflicts in Nigeria's
biggest city.
When the LMDC opened its doors in 2002, it had only one
room at the High Court on Lagos Island; now the alternative courthouse occupies
almost an entire wing. Since 2009, the LMDC regularly organises Settlement
Weeks like this one in Ogba, transforming a traditional courthouse into a
mediation centre, hoping to promote the concept, where the parties meet in
confidentiality with an independent negotiator, to a wider audience.
The inertia of the Nigerian justice system - the average
timeline of a court case is four to 10 years, and following the case through to
the Supreme Court can take at least 20 - makes this an attractive alternative.
The average LMDC case takes three to five months, and more than half of the
cases that have been referred by magistrates take just a single morning to
resolve. And being much faster means it is also much cheaper.
A bulletin board on the wall of the entry hall of
Kirikiri Medium Security Prison reveals the repercussions of the slow-turning
wheels of Nigerian justice. During a visit early last year it read Convicted:
98. Awaiting trial: 2,457. In other words, less than 4 percent of the prisoners
had been convicted of a crime.
Participants wait in the hallway of the courthouse until
their case is called [Femke van Zeijl/Al Jazeera].
In some cases an
inmate had been detained for a longer period than the maximum penalty for the
crime of which they were suspected but not yet convicted. And many of the
detainees' cases were civil, not criminal, anyway. It is these kinds of
disputes that the Multi-Door Courthouse is encouraging the judiciary to refer
to them during Settlement Weeks like the one in Samuel Ilori Courthouse in
Ogba.
The mediator: With their arms crossed and disgruntled
expressions on their faces a widow and her stepson sit at the mediation table.
Since her husband, his father, died in 2011, the two have been at loggerheads.
The police got involved two years ago when the stepson said his stepmother had
sent local thugs to molest him. She was taken into custody and spent a week on
remand in Kirikiri.
Since then she has been subpoenaed every couple of months
as the court case has dragged on for two years. They haven't been on speaking
terms all this time. But during a morning session at the Settlement Week,
mediator Oyelade gets them to address each other.
"I know this issue goes much deeper than the
beating," says Oleyade, as she leans across the table. After she has
listened to the sometimes life-long grievances of both parties, the mediator
puts all of those aside. She suggests the real problem is the deceased's
inheritance. Five years after his death, the family still hasn't been able to
divide the house the father left his two heirs - the widow's stepson and her
birth son.
"Until that
issue is resolved, I don't see peace coming to this family," states
Oyelade. "Can we come to a solution this morning if we manage to share the
estate fairly?" she asks, looking around the table. The stepson nods and
the widow mumbles: "Of course. I want peace in the family."
The experienced mediator always starts a session by
explaining the rules. All phones must be switched off; everyone gets time to
say their part without interruptions; the tone should remain respectful.
"I will allow you to vent your anger, but you should also be willing to
see reason," she says. After hearing them out, Oyelade sends each of the
parties out of the room at different times so that she can talk to them separately.
In the case of the widow and her stepson, she appeals to their respect for the
deceased: what would he say if he saw his loved ones fighting like this? It
seems to soften both the plaintiff and the defendant.
"I use what I understand about personal
relationships and our cultural background to reason with people," Oyelade
explains afterwards. She used to be a lawyer, but she gave up practice eight
years ago when she was introduced to mediation. She was immediately smitten,
she says: "To me it comes naturally. When I see a conflict, I feel like
settling it, balancing all interests. I feel successful when at the end of the
day everyone goes home happy and the parties even maintain their
relationship."
Courtesy: Al
Jazeera
