NEW NBA EXCO AND OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM

The Nigerian Bar Association must promote the rule of law

The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has elected a new executive. Although there were initial glitches in the online voting, the process was relatively free and fair with minimal acrimony at the end. It is also noteworthy that the new NBA will be led by a recognisable woman, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN. Just as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, president of the Court of Appeal and Director General of the Nigerian Law school are all women of considerable qualification, experience and expertise. We welcome this unintended gender equity development, which perhaps presents an opportunity for the women to lead a moral rebirth of the justice system in Nigeria against the backdrop of previous failures and decline.

While we congratulate the new NBA leadership, we hope that under Badejo-Okusanya, the association will begin to act as the bulwark of social justice and defender of the rule of law and democracy as it was in the past. To rekindle public interest in the association, the new executive must also be open and transparent in words and deeds, especially considering that indiscipline among lawyers has reached an intolerable level. The impunity with which members of the profession now engage in illegal and fraudulent activities has called to question the ability of the Legal Disciplinary Committee of the NBA to sanitise the profession. To return the legal profession to that enviable position it used to be, the association must tackle these challenges.

 The new NBA is assuming office at a time when there are serious moral and ethical challenges facing the nation’s justice system and the judiciary ahead of the 2027 general election. And because of the type of judgments that have been repeatedly delivered in recent times, the notion of the judiciary as the last hope of the common man has been shredded. Equality before the law presupposes that all individuals are subject to the same law. Where it is eroded or lacking, democratic rule is also imperilled. The general notion is that justice in Nigeria is increasingly for the rich, and politically influential.

The NBA has a critical role to play in reversing this. Judges, attorneys, legal scholars and intellectuals are all first and foremost lawyers and members of the NBA before anything else. To that extent, the NBA has a statutory obligation to guide and guard the conduct and integrity of the legal profession. That requirement now demands urgent action, and in redirecting, especially at a period when courts of the same jurisdictions are nullifying one another, and lawyers are acting as proxies for unwholesome practices on the bench.

Indeed, one area that calls for attention is the role of judges in political matters. Even though not entirely their making, a handful of judges now decide the ultimate outcome of elections, often at variance with the verdict of voters expressed at the ballot. This anomaly has become so commonplace that some wealthy political catalysts now ignore conventional political campaigns and wait on compromised judges to deliver their desired outcomes.  The battle for a depoliticised judiciary must proceed in tandem with a conscious anti-corruption crusade in both the bar and the bench. This requires that lawyers must return to the best tradition of legal practice. Presentations and judgments must have the integrity and erudition to stand scrutiny.

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The association should act as the bulwark of social justice and defender of the rule of law and democracy