Language Accessibility in Nigerian Court Proceedings: Professional Recommendations for Interpreter Use in Kaduna State

Access to justice in Nigeria is significantly constrained for citizens with limited English proficiency, as court proceedings at all levels above customary courts are conducted in English, creating a language access barrier that is rarely systematically addressed despite its constitutional implications. This study examines language accessibility in court proceedings in Kaduna State from a professional applied linguistics perspective, focusing on interpreter use practices and their quality implications. Professional investigation methods combined observation of forty-eight court sessions across the Kaduna High Court, Magistrates Court, and two Sharia Courts, structured interviews with twenty-two judges and magistrates, fourteen court-appointed interpreters, and twenty legal aid lawyers, and post-hearing interviews with sixteen defendants who required interpretation. Observation data reveal that interpreter provision is inconsistent, with many hearings proceeding without any interpretation for demonstrably non-English-competent defendants. Where interpretation is provided, it is typically performed by ad hoc court staff without interpreter training, and quality assessment by back-translation method indicates significant accuracy losses in approximately forty percent of sampled interpretation sequences. Defendant interview data confirm that language inaccessibility affects perceived procedural fairness. The study develops professional recommendations for a Kaduna State Court Language Access Programme, specifying interpreter accreditation standards, scheduling protocols for interpreter provision, and a monitoring mechanism for interpreter quality. Model provisions from court language access programmes in South Africa and Kenya are reviewed as comparative reference. Keywords: court interpretation, language access, Kaduna State, judicial communication, applied linguistics.