Official Launch of
Ondo Resource Centre
CLEEN Foundation and the Ondo
branch of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) inaugurated a legal resource centre
to promote accountability and transparency in the criminal justice system. The
centre presents a human capacity development and empowerment venue for all
Nigerians interested in the fight against corruption.
The Ondo State resource centre
was inaugurated with the support of the MacArthur Foundation under the ACJA
project aimed at Promoting transparency and Accountability in the justice
sector with the objective of providing records of court judgments on corruption
at zero cost to both lawyers, litigants, media and the public.
The objective is to have Court
judgments on corruption easily accessible to both lawyers and litigants seven
days from the date of the release of the final judgement. Rather than wait for the hard copies of court
judgments, the judgments would be made available to lawyers at their fingertips
through the Uwazi web platform (cleen.uwazi.io). Data from courts in Nigeria
are currently being collated, uploaded and populated into the UWAZI application
online.
The concept to digitalize records
of court judgments for reference and research purposes is not a new one as it
has gained traction in other parts of the country as well as in Nigeria. The
UWAZI online application platform is easily accessible as the platform can be
accessed with or without internet connections. The platform is a web based
platform created by CLEEN Foundation with support from Huridocs and is aimed at
digitalizing courts proceedings and judgments in Nigeria.
It enables users to scan, upload,
publish court documents and create table of contents while end users can
search, filter documents, track changes, cross reference and download documents
and court rulings on criminal cases, The NBA Chairman of Ondo state commended
CLEEN for the laudable initiative stating that the resource centre was a
commendable initiative while imploring Lawyers and stakeholders in Ondo state
to actively interface with the centre as establishment of the centre was long a
long awaited reform.