The name of the Acting Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho, has emerged on the National Judicial Council’s membership list published on council’s website.

This followed a report on ’s Thursday’s story by one the national newspaper  reporting that Tsoho’s name was absent from the list despite the statutory status of the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court as a permanent member of the council.

Our correspondent who visited the NJC website at about 3pm on Friday found Justice Tsoho’s name occupying the seventh position on the online membership list of the council.

As of 4.32 pm on Wednesday, when our correspondent previously visited the website, the seventh position on the list was being occupied by the newly-inaugurated  Acting President of the National Industrial Court, Justice Benedict Kanyip, who now occupies the eighth position in the updated list.

The emergence of Tsoho’s name on the list increased the number of members of the council on the list from 22 which it was as of 4.32pm on Wednesday to 23 as by 3pm on Friday.

A newspaper  had   in its Thursday’s story reported that a Justice of the Supreme Court,  Justice Olabode Rhodes-Vivour, an indigene of Lagos State, had been named as the Deputy Chairman of the NJC.

This was observed by our correspondent on the council’s website on Wednesday.

Rhodes-Vivour now deputises the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad, who is statutorily the Chairman of the NJC, the body with statutory power to see to the appointment and disciplining of Nigerian judges.

The office of the Deputy Chairman of the NJC is reserved for the second most senior Justice of the Supreme Court, the position which Rhodes-Vivour currently holds among the 14 Justices of the apex court, with the CJN as the most senior.

Paragraph   20 (a)  of Part I of the Third Schedule to the Constitution makes “the next most senior Justice of the Supreme Court” a member of the council and provides that the person “shall be the Deputy Chairman”.

The NJC’s altered membership list on the council’s website also showed that the name of the immediate-past President of the National Industrial Court, Justice Babatunde Adejumo, who retired from office on October 1, 2019, had been replaced with the name of the Acting President of the court, Justice Benedict Kanyip.

But conspicuously absent from the list as of Wednesday was the Acting Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice  Tsoho, who had assumed his new role since July 26, following the retirement of his predecessor, Justice Adamu Abdu-Kafarati, the previous day.

The Chief Judge of the Federal High Court is a statutory member of the council, but no NJC official was available to explain the exclusion of Justice Tsoho’s name from the freshly updated list on Wednesday.

But in contrast to Justice Tsoho’s exclusion from the list, Justice Kanyip who was only sworn in on Wednesday by the CJN as the Acting President of the National Industrial Court was on the list.

Our correspondent learnt on Wednesday that the website of the NJC was updated last week to reflect the new development, which inexplicably excluded Justice Tsoho’s name.

With the emergence of Justice Tsoho’s name on the list on Friday, the NJC’s membership list, the NJC currently has risen to 23, which short of one member to make its full complement of 24.

The other absent member from the list is the member who ought to occupy one of the five slots statutorily reserved for retired judges of either the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court on the council.