De-risking The Hidden Costs Of Lack Of Access To Justice & The Imperative Of People-centered Justice

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KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE HAGUE INSTITUTE FOR INNOVATION OF LAW TITLED: DE-RISKING THE HIDDEN COSTS OF LACK OF ACCESS TO JUSTICE AND THE IMPERATIVE OF PEOPLE-CENTRED JUSTICE, AT THE PEACE PALACE IN THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS ON THE 8TH OF MAY, 2025

PROTOCOLS

I would like to thank Mr. Jude Ilo, CEO of The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, and his team for the very kind invitation to participate in this timely conversation on why justice matters and also for their generous hospitality since we arrived here in The Hague.

Let me begin with an obvious fact: the cost of the lack of access to justice is staggering, and it is borne, not in courts or legal textbooks, but in the lived realities of ordinary people across our societies. Millions of people, especially in developing countries, live outside the protection of the law. Their land is taken, their wages withheld, their rights violated, yet they have no meaningful recourse. Their silence may not make headlines, but the cost of their exclusion is felt in every sector of our society. The economic cost is immense. When contracts are not enforced and informal traders and micro-entrepreneurs operate in fear of extortion or seizure of goods by government officials, local investment shrinks and poverty becomes permanent.

The social cost is visible when people turn to violence or vigilante justice because they have no access to functioning, credible institutions. The gendered cost is profound —when women who report abuse, or widows claiming inheritance, are met with bureaucracy or indifference, inequality becomes institutionalised and the political cost is dangerous. When justice appears to serve only the powerful, democracy becomes fragile, and citizen engagement withers. But above all, there is a moral cost, a quiet and corrosive erosion of human dignity. To be denied justice is to be told that your pain is irrelevant, your rights are conditional, and your existence negotiable.

During my tenure as Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of Lagos State, Nigeria, the nation’s commercial centre and its most populous city,  we confronted these challenges head-on with a comprehensive reform agenda developed with several civil society organisations in the Justice and Governance sectors and the Nigeria Bar Association. We realised in more specific terms that the lack of or poor access to justice conceals several terrible hidden costs. For example, we realised that while the State provided the Directorate of Public Prosecutions as a traditional department of the Ministry of Justice, the vast majority of accused persons charged before the courts could not afford the cost of legal representation. Besides, even before being charged in court, they had had no legal representation as the law required at the point of arrest and interrogation. Many were in court, having made admissions or confessions they would claim were induced. Aside from the yeoman’s job done by human rights groups, which still only amounted to a drop in the ocean relative to the numbers of persons in need of legal defence, it became obvious that the government had to provide legal assistance.

We created the Office of the Public Defender, a unit in the newly created Department of Citizens’ Rights. The OPD deployed lawyers for the legal defence of indigent accused persons. Later on, a Duty Solicitors Scheme was established in collaboration with civil society groups. These were lawyers who made the rounds in police stations and detention centres to assist arrested and detained persons. A major issue that we had to deal with was determining who was indigent. We did not have a predetermined threshold, and this gave us flexibility.

A bigger problem was legal assistance to indigent litigants in civil cases, and these were far more than criminal cases. There were thousands of cases of tenants evicted from their rented apartments without due process, inheritance and succession claims, especially from widows who, on account of draconian widowhood practices and being overpowered by relatives of deceased husbands, could not access their rights. Also, a major deterrent against medical negligence is usually the threat of legal actions against medical personnel or hospitals.

For a vast majority of citizens who suffered serious cases of negligence, this simply was not affordable. Indeed, a major tactic of individuals and organizations was to take an indigent person to court, knowing that they would not be able to afford the legal cost of long-drawn litigation, and thus force them to abandon their claims or rights. Even delays in the justice system mean that the most vulnerable will be unable to bear the costs. In response, we expanded the mandate of the public defenders to include all civil cases.

This was important because it enabled the State to support indigent litigants in establishing their civil claims against individuals, corporations and even the government or its agencies. Landlord and tenant cases were particularly numerous. Magistrate courts had jurisdiction in many such cases, but magistrate courts were slow in resolving disputes. This led to two consequences: first, landlords who followed legal due process could be held up in court for years, during which they received no rents.

When cases were finally decided, enforcing their claims for accumulated rent was usually too difficult, so they often abandoned claims for accumulated rent. These delays discouraged private investments in middle to low cost housing, and the State noticed that its housing stock was diminishing as private persons invested in stocks, shares and other assets rather than in houses for rent. The second consequence of delays in landlord and tenant cases was the difficulty of tenants being able to seek redress against landlords who evicted them without due process. So we established Citizens Mediation Centres. The objective was to make mediation services accessible to all, especially for small claims. The mediation centres had trained mediators, mostly lawyers, from the Ministry of Justice.

At the end of a successful mediation, a binding and enforceable agreement is signed by the parties. It achieved considerable success. In one year, we were able to resolve over 8000 landlord and tenant cases whereas magistrate courts were barely able to complete 2,000 cases. And since then, they have been resolving over 20,000 cases yearly. There are about 18 centres now, each housing a number of mediators. The services are free. We also upgraded infrastructure, digitised court systems and improved case management procedures.

We improved the conditions of service for judicial officers and worked hard to reduce delays in the adjudication process. These efforts led to measurable improvements. Court efficiency increased, more people accessed legal aid, and a culture of rights awareness began to grow. Lagos became a national model for justice sector reform. And yet, with all these gains, a disquieting realisation set in: we were improving the system, but the system itself was not designed to meet the justice needs of the majority. Our reforms, while progressive, were still rooted in an orthodox, institution-centred framework.

They improved what existed, but they could not fully reach the vast populations living in informal settlements, working in the shadows of the economy, or navigating customary systems far removed from the courthouse. Because, fundamentally, the justice system we were reforming was not built to serve the poor. It reflected the broader development paradigm that shaped it, one that was top-down, exclusive, and structurally detached from the everyday experiences of the people it claimed to protect.

My tenure as Attorney General ended in 2007. In 2008, the groundbreaking report “Making the Law Work for Everyone” by the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, funded by the UNDP, was published. It highlighted what we all suspected: the exclusion of millions from the rule of law and substantial justice.  In response, the report proposed four “pillars” for legal empowerment of the poor, which the Commission argued would enable those living in poverty to become partners in, rather than passive recipients of development programs.

These four pillars are: access to justice and the rule of law,  property rights, labour rights and business rights. This was the birth of the People Centred Justice approach to the conceptualisation and delivery of justice. Let me do a quick summary of the thinking behind the approach before I make some concluding points. The People-Centred Justice approach represents a fundamental shift in how justice is understood and delivered. Rather than focusing on formal legal institutions, it starts with people’s real-life needs, especially those of marginalised communities.

The most radical feature of the approach is the reframing of justice as a public service, which much like health or education, must be available, accessible, affordable, and effective. This simple redefinition changes everything. Justice as a service is then delivered through diverse, community-based platforms like mobile courts and legal clinics, not just formal courts.

Second is the Problem-Solving Focus, it prioritises resolving people’s actual justice issues over legal procedures. The third is that it is Demand-Driven, it starts with people’s needs and perceptions, not institutional assumptions. The fourth is the synergy of Formal and Informal Systems, working with local, customary justice mechanisms while aligning them with human rights. The fifth is the Promotion of Legal Education and early intervention to prevent injustice. The sixth is the Intentional Use of Evidence to design responsive, targeted justice solutions. The seventh is Inclusive Governance, encouraging community involvement in justice system design and reform.

Ultimately, this model aims to transform justice from an elite, institutional process into a practical, participatory service that strengthens dignity, inclusion, and equity. The insights provided by the report and the development of the People Centred Justice approach, I believe,e radically reframed the thinking of many reformists working on justice reform in developing countries, including mine and colleagues in the Justice Research Institute. And there is a large number of innovative works inspired by this paradigm being done by several organisations.

Permit me to conclude with a few learnings so far. The first is that only a people-centred system of development can give rise to a truly people-centred system of justice. People Centred Development is a development paradigm that places the needs and voices of the vast majority – particularly those at the bottom of the pyramid at the core of policy and planning. Instead of privileging the wealthy elite in hopes that benefits will eventually “trickle down”, this approach insists that economic decisions directly prioritize improving ordinary people’s lives.

Advancing a people-centred development agenda in developing economies requires a decisive shift in policy frameworks from trickle-down orthodoxies to “bottom-up” and inclusive strategies. So budgeting and fiscal policy for example, should explicitly prioritize investments in the well-being of the poor majority. Rather than assuming benefits will seep down, governments need to “shift towards direct investment in the economic self-reliance and resilience of poor and vulnerable people,” for example, by funding rural healthcare, public education, and of course, justice systems planned around the real social and economic circumstances and needs of the majority.

The second is that a people-centred justice model isn’t just about improving access to the law; it’s about transforming the relationship between people and power. It seeks to build justice systems that are trusted, understood, and used, especially by those who need them most. It replaces silence with voice, invisibility with inclusion, and exclusion with fairness. This is the future of justice because it speaks to the needs of the largest numbers, it is practical, responsive and fundamentally just.

Thank you for listening.