By Makutu Manneh
A senior Gambian lawyer and politician, Lamin J. Darboe, said the country’s mounting court backlog is largely the result of an under-resourced judiciary, arguing that chronic shortages of personnel and equipment have left the system unable to keep pace with rising caseloads.
Speaking in an interview with Kerr Fatou, Mr. Darboe acknowledged that delays in the courts stem from multiple factors but said inadequate funding and staffing remain the most significant.
“The judiciary is an arm of government,” he said. “It should not be treated like the departments of education or health. It is a constitutional arm of government.”
Mr. Darboe argued that the justice system should be provided with sufficient resources to recruit the judges, magistrates, and support staff necessary to function effectively. Without that support, he said, structural deficiencies would continue to undermine access to justice.
“That is a problem,” he added. “Those structural issues fit into the larger problem of governance in the country—not governance on the part of the judiciary, but governance overall.”
He maintained that the judiciary should not be forced to lobby for basic necessities, saying that justified requests—whether for electronic equipment, additional judges and magistrates, or Islamic court officials—should be met as a matter of course.
“All the segments that go into making the judiciary an efficient arm of government,” Mr. Darboe said, “it should have all of those.”
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