Ex-NBA President, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, has urged the Supreme Court to introduce a temporary hybrid filing arrangement that would allow lawyers to submit physical court processes when technical failures prevent them from filing electronically.
Olanipekun SAN said the transition to electronic filing had encountered practical difficulties capable of frustrating litigants and exposing legal practitioners to procedural consequences beyond their control.
He raised the concerns in an address delivered on behalf of the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN) during the commencement of the 2026 New Legal Year and the swearing-in of 68 new Senior Advocates of Nigeria in Abuja.
While acknowledging the importance of digitisation in modernising judicial administration, the senior lawyer warned that technological systems must operate reliably if they are to achieve their intended purpose.
He identified intermittent portal downtime, slow server responses during peak filing periods and software glitches among the difficulties affecting the electronic filing process.
He also complained that lawyers who completed electronic filing were sometimes required to submit physical hard copies of their processes, a requirement he said undermined the objective of moving towards a paperless judicial system.
According to Olanipekun, these difficulties become particularly serious when a litigant is required to comply with strict procedural timelines.
He pointed to the time-sensitive requirements of the Supreme Court Rules, including Order 4 Rule 15, as illustrating the danger of allowing technological problems to interfere with the timely filing of court processes.
The concern, he argued, is that a lawyer who attempts to comply with the rules could face procedural difficulties because the electronic platform is unavailable or fails to process the filing.
Olanipekun SAN called for a temporary arrangement under which a litigant who encounters demonstrable technical difficulties could submit the relevant process manually while the electronic filing system is being repaired or stabilised.
The proposed arrangement would serve as a safeguard against situations in which a malfunctioning portal prevents a party from meeting a court deadline.
He argued that the ultimate objective of electronic filing should be to facilitate justice, reduce unnecessary delays and make court processes more accessible, rather than create additional obstacles for litigants.
The proposal does not necessarily imply that every filing should be accepted in paper form. Rather, the central argument is that a clearly defined fallback procedure should exist for exceptional circumstances involving technical failure.
Such an arrangement would require transparent rules governing the evidence of technical failure, the time of attempted filing, the authorisation of manual submission and the subsequent integration of the documents into the electronic record.
The senior advocate urged the judiciary to address the underlying technical problems rather than rely indefinitely on workarounds.
A reliable electronic filing system, he argued, is essential to the timely administration of justice and the effective management of increasingly complex litigation.
He also called for the elimination of unnecessary duplication between electronic and physical submissions where such duplication is not required for a legitimate procedural purpose.
