CHALLENGES OF THE ENFORCEMENT OF JUDGMENTS IN THE FCT AND LAGOS STATE JUDICIARY

This work is entitled "CHALLENGES OF THE ENFORCEMENT OF JUDGMENTS IN THE FCT AND LAGOS STATE JUDICIARY.” And it was embarked upon in other to identify the challenges of the enforcement of judgment in the FCT and Lagos State judiciary. The challenges and prospects were identified to enable judgment creditors understand the rudiments and procedures of enforcing judgments delivered in their favor in both the FCT and Lagos jurisdiction of the judiciary. The choice of this jurisdiction was not farfetched; they constitute the busiest and innovative jurisdictions in the country. It is a settled position of law that the overriding function of the judicial process of enforcement is to provide for the judgment creditor the opportunity to reap the fruits of the judgment and to obtain for him due satisfaction, compensation, restitution, performance or compliance with what the court has granted by way of remedy or relief. This underlying purpose conforms to the general principle of law that judgment or order of court, no matter considered unsatisfactory, must be obeyed otherwise the authority of the court would be diminished and the legal order would suffer a breakdown. In practice, judgments of courts are not willingly obeyed by the judgment debtors. Where this happens, the issue of execution or enforcement of judgment comes into play to compel compliance with the judgment or order of courts. It is an established fact that, FCT and Lagos State Judiciary are the largest and busiest in the country in terms of enforcement of judgment with a few similarities and enormous differences when it comes to enforcement. The sheriff and civil process Act, Judgment enforcement rules, their indigenous civil procedure rules and the practice directions for enforcement and some practices were examined in this work. The research employed a doctrinal research methodology to arrive at its conclusions. In the course of this research it was observed that in practice, judgments of courts are not willingly obeyed by the judgment debtors, where this happens, the issue of execution or enforcement of judgment comes into play to compel compliance with the judgment or order of courts some of such challenges were also examined. It was therefore in view of the increase in the number of judgments that required enforcement considered the provisions of the Statutes and practices in place and also provided remedies for the various forms of impediments and challenges of enforcement. As a result the research recommended that a universal process should be put in place as an amendment of the existing procedures that have made it difficult and over bearing on judgment creditors. In the final analysis, the research concluded that there was an urgent need for a better, safer, harmonized and robust way of enforcing judgments.