A legal practitioner and former Prosecutor of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Johnson Ojogbane, has called on the new President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mazi Afam Osigwe (SAN), to use his position to change the negative narrative about the judiciary in the country.
According him, Osigwe must immediately tackle some issues to engender unity in the Bar, which has struggled with cohesion and credibility in the last few years.
Ojogbane, Lead Counsel and Senior Partner of Signature Law Firm, in a statement pointed out the discontent within the Bar including the formation of the Law Society of Nigeria (LSN) and the SPIDEL imbroglio.
He said, “My advice to him is to call a meeting urgently with all the branch chairmen and their secretaries from the associations across the country.
“A conference of that kind of seniority; he should sit down and woo everybody back to this fold. I don’t think it is in our interest to break up the Bar currently as it is. The trouble we have had in the Bar for me — that is my personal opinion — is not sufficient to break up the Bar now. We are better together. Our voice will be stronger. The NBA has a role to play even in policy formulation in the country.
“There is so much suffering in the land. Fuel and food prices have gone higher and people are suffering. Should the NBA sit on the fence and say ‘oh, we are just lawyers, we are not going to do anything?’ No! We have a role to play because we are one of the greatest voices in the country today that people listen to.”
Speaking on indiscipline within the Bar and the Bench, Ojogbane expressed confidence in the capacity of Osigwe to restore dignity in the Bar and impact the bench positively.
He said, “I have this absolute confidence in his ability to navigate the judicial process in Nigeria; that is the Bar and the Bench and come up with a more constructive development for the Bar. We have a problem of conflicting judgements of court across the land, particularly political cases; election petitions.
“People go to what we call forum shopping. People go to one court and take an order. Another goes to another court and takes an order. Sometimes we blame the politicians and ask why they are running around. But the question is: “Who is taking the cases to court for them? It is us, lawyers.
“A lawyer gets an order from court A; the other one goes to court B and gets another order on the same set of facts and issues. So I am hoping that Afam Osigwe, will use his experience at the Bar and his goodwill among lawyers both the senior level, middle level and even young lawyers. I hope he will engage with the lawyers – those of us very senior lawyers there already, the intermediate and junior ones to encourage lawyers to do more for the sake of the association than for personal gains.
“Lawyers are the ones taking these cases to different courts and getting these conflicting judgements. It is my hope that Afam Osigwe, will be able to navigate through what is the interest of lawyers in terms of their rewards for their professional advice as per services and public interest.
“Can we continue like this? No, we can’t. We can’t be getting judgments like we are going to market to buy yam from Wuse market and buy another one from Utako. No, we can’t continue like that. There must be some level of decorum among lawyers; a level of discipline that says that if a court has taken an order on a particular set of facts, the option open to a lawyer is to either apply for that particular order to be set aside or appeal to a higher court to take a different look to the case rather than go and get an order and I will go and get my own.
“What about the judiciary themselves, who are the ones giving these orders? Lawyers have their problems going to these courts and the judges have their problems entertaining these cases. Somebody goes to the Federal High Court in Abuja here to get an order; another person goes to the FCT High Court and they are courts of coordinate jurisdiction.
“I hope that Afam Osigwe will be able to navigate these processes and change the narrative. Engage with the judiciary at the highest level, the National Judicial Council (NJC), the Office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Office of the Chief Judges across the states and maybe, we should do a re-orientation. If the judiciary continues to give out conflicting orders among themselves and lawyers continue to support the process, the system will not survive. My advice to the Learned Silk is that he should take this as a major priority because what it is doing to the judiciary and the Bar is denigrating the system.
“And talking about denigrating the system, I told the Learned Silk during the Bar conference that going forward, he needs to have a committee set up to work with the Bar and the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC).
The discipline in the legal profession is going down, we are not saying it is completely ruined but we are saying we can do more to be more disciplined than this.
“Is there no case you can say, for the sake of my integrity I am not going to be involved in? For example, corruption cases. There are regulations ongoing, with the new anti-money laundering law that was passed expecting lawyers to do some reporting to the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering (SCUML). The Control unit has to issue certificates to lawyers. These have raised a lot of controversies but in the rule of operations conducted for lawyers, these regulations have been there to guide lawyers to say these are the limits you can go.
“These are things you cannot do but guess what? A lot of lawyers don’t even know the rules. They don’t even know what their limit is. What is the relationship between you and your client? At what point do you separate yourself from confidentiality? If a crime is committed, are you going to say, you are going to maintain your confidentiality with your client? If your client is about to commit a crime, are you going to sit back and collect your fees and behave as if nothing happened? Lawyers don’t live in another world. They live in the same society. So we can’t sit on the fence and be asking for things to change when we are not changing.
“So, I am hoping that the Learned Silk, Mazi Afam Osigwe will be able to bring his wealth of experience to cause further education among lawyers. There are things you cannot afford to be doing. There are steps we cannot take. We have moral issues. We have even religious issues. We have societal expectations. When I was growing up under the then Director of the Nigerian Law School, Ibironke, lawyers were the most respected people in every society. If you say something in your neighbourhood, your resident association meeting or even tenants’ meeting, they listen because they think lawyers know what to do.
“Lawyers should know what is wrong and what is right. We can’t take every case. We can’t ask for every order, and that is why because of a lack of discipline among we lawyers, you have the case of fake lawyers erupting all over the place. I told the NBA President during my conversation with him that issue of fake lawyers should be seriously addressed. If we are a compact unit, if we work together as a team, if we don’t leave an opening, these people cannot just step in and start doing what they are doing.
“Osigwe should do more and make a difference. There are disciplinary issues among lawyers.
“For instance, this issue of conflicting court orders, is it not high time we took it before the disciplinary committee? Lawyers taking money from their clients and not doing exactly what they promised their clients that they would do. In the States that is what they call malpractice and you can be sued, you can pay heavy fines, you can even be de-robed and they can take away your license.
“I would also advise him to take a closer look at the activities of the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC); the issue of conferment of SAN. There are lots of complaints out there among lawyers and among the public that, wow, SANship has now become like it is in the market. You can buy whatever you want to buy. But I can say without any doubt in mind that over a greater percentage of those who are conferred with this rank actually merit it.
“And when there are cases of people saying that money has been used, there is no society that does not have those complaints when things are done. Sometimes, what gives birth to these accusations of somebody getting SAN without merit, is the performance of these lawyers in the court. For you to be a SAN, one of the major conditions is that you have practiced law in the court; you have gone to court; and you started your case from the beginning to the end at the lower court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
“That means you’re versatile, you know the rudiments of the law, you know practice, you know appearance in court, what to say, what not to say, you stand on your feet, you speak the law. You see, some SANs stand up in court and sometimes they really mess up. And then you see them dribbled by a younger lawyer.
“When that happens, people are prone to start talking about it. Did this one get his own SAN from the highest decision-making body in the legal profession? Or where did he get his own from? These are observations people make.
“The Learned Silk and his team should engage the LPPC and raise the standard for the conferment of SAN. If you’re going to confer at all, confer on somebody who can defend it.
Ojogbane also addressed the question of whether Yakubu Maikyau underperformed as NBA President.
The former EFCC Senior Prosecutor said, “The last two years have been a lot of issues. It is not because Y.C. underperformed. It is not because he wasn’t what we thought he was going to be when we elected him but as you know about life, things happen. People do their best and sometimes your best may not be what people want.
“During his tenure, there were lots of controversy. There is a new association – Law Society of Nigeria hoping to be registered with the CAC. They have a matter with the CAC about registering that association. Apart from even the Law Society issue, SPIDEL people went to court against the Bar conference that was held, asking the court to stop the conference from holding. That to me was sacrilegious.
“When the BAR conference gathers together, that’s the largest gathering of lawyers in the whole world. NBA Nigeria is the largest gathering of lawyers in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The NBA conference is the largest in any part of the world. For a unit in the NBA to ask the court not to allow the NBA to hold election, for me was sacrilegious.
“We are hoping that Afam Osigwe will use his extensive knowledge of the Bar to foster unity; to talk to leaders of thoughts in the legal profession; even those who are too old to attend conference; to talk to Chairmen and Secretaries of the Bar across the branches in the country
“Today, look at what is happening and I want this to be heard very well. NBA conference. We go to conference. We pay for practicing fees. We pay our participation fees. This year we even paid more and there was no conference bag for this conference.
“My son, his colleagues’ who came from his chambers and other lawyers were asking the same question — ‘where is the conference bag?’ We went to a conference and all we got was a biro and a jotter and our tag.
“I want to ask Afam Osigwe through this medium to please do better next time. Let it not repeat itself. Let it not happen that lawyers will go to Bar conference after they have paid their practicing and conference fees, and there is no bag to put your materials in while you are in a conference moving around. I think we should not allow that to happen. My candid advice.”
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