Home Blog Page 15

In Memoriam: BOSAN mourns Professor Alfred Bandele Kasumu, SAN

The Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN) announces with deep sorrow the transition to eternal glory of one of our most distinguished and esteemed members, Professor Alfred Bandele Kasunmu, SAN, who passed away on Sunday, August 9, 2026, at the age of 92.

Professor Kasunmu was a titan of the legal profession, a pioneering legal scholar, and a quintessential Senior Advocate whose life and career set an enduring standard of excellence, integrity, and profound intellect. From his early days as a foundational lecturer at the University of Ife to his tenure as the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Lagos, he played a pivotal role in shaping the legal minds of generations of Nigerian lawyers.

Read Also: Professor A.B. Kasunmu, SAN, foremost lawyer and scholar, dies at 92

Read Also: “A Rare Breed”: Agbakoba, SAN, hails Kasunmu as one of Nigeria’s greatest advocates

His contributions to public service as the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice for Lagos State (1975–1978) were marked by an unwavering commitment to the rule of law.

Upon his conferment with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 1978 (he is Number 20 on the Roll), he continued to distinguish himself in private practice, as a brilliant advocate leaving an indelible mark on Nigerian jurisprudence through his extensive legal scholarship and his astute representation in the domestic and international fora in both litigation and arbitration.

The Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria mourns the loss of a mentor, a gentleman of the Inner Bar, and a legal icon. His scholarly contributions, particularly his seminal texts and articles, will remain foundational resources for the legal community for years to come.

We honour his memory and the legacy of service he leaves behind. He was no doubt the last of the titans from the old brigade who as the oldest living Senior Advocate of Nigeria for many years served as Leader of the Bar and Vice-Chairman of the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria.

On behalf of the leadership and the entire membership of the Body, we extend our deepest and most heartfelt condolences to the Kasunmu family, his friends, and his colleagues during this time of profound grief. May the Almighty grant him soul eternal rest and comfort all those he has left behind.

May his memory remain a blessing.

Mr. Olumide Sofowora, SAN, C.Arb
Secretary, Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN)

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

“A Rare Breed”: Agbakoba, SAN, hails Kasunmu as one of Nigeria’s greatest advocates

The death of Professor Alfred Bandele Kasunmu, SAN, has drawn a deeply personal tribute from one of Nigeria’s most prominent advocates, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, who described the late jurist as “a rare breed” of the old school of Senior Advocates whose courtroom excellence placed him in the highest tradition of the Nigerian Bar.

For Agbakoba, the loss is not simply that of a distinguished senior counsel whose name became associated with major legal battles, but of a lawyer whose forensic skills helped shape the careers of those who appeared against him and alongside him.

Read Also: Professor A.B. Kasunmu, SAN, foremost lawyer and scholar, dies at 92

Recalling his own encounters with Kasunmu as a young counsel, Agbakoba said he remained indebted to the late professor for much of the advocate he eventually became, placing him alongside the legendary Chief Rotimi Williams, SAN, among the greatest advocates in the history of Nigerian legal practice.

His full statement made available to Law & Society Magazine reads:

Professor Kasunmu SAN was a fine gentleman. A rare breed of the old school of SAN,s whose excellence in Court ranks just below that of the Master , Chief Rotimi Willams SAN , the incomparable genius of the Nigerian Bar.

Both these gentlemen will remain in perpetuity as the greatest in the history of the legal profession. I was very privileged to, even as a young counsel to engage Professor Kasunmu in many major legal battles . I will always remember him with fondness.

I owe a lot of who I have become to the foresenic skills of Professor Kasunmu. Long will he be remembered as one of the most accomplished senior Counsel in Nigerian Legal history.

Dr Olisa Agbakoba SAN

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

Professor A.B. Kasunmu, SAN, foremost lawyer and scholar, dies at 92

Former Dean of University of Lagos Law Faculty and Attorney-General of Lagos State remembered for scholarship, advocacy and decades of influence on Nigeria’s legal profession

Professor Alfred Bandele Kasunmu, SAN, one of Nigeria’s most distinguished legal scholars and advocates and a senior figure of the Nigerian Bar, has died at the age of 92.

The Kasunmu family announced his death in a statement on Sunday, saying the renowned lawyer, scholar, mentor, father, grandfather and great-grandfather died peacefully in the early hours of August 9, 2026.

“With gratitude to God for a life well spent, we announce the passing of our beloved father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Professor Alfred Bandele Kasunmu SAN, who departed peacefully in the early hours of Sunday 9th August 2026,” the family said.

The family described the late professor as “a distinguished scholar, mentor, and Senior Advocate of Nigeria” whose life was defined by wisdom, integrity and service to the law, education and humanity.

“We take solace in the remarkable life he lived and the countless lives he touched through his dedication to the law, education, and humanity,” the statement added.

The family said funeral arrangements would be announced later and asked for prayers during the period of mourning.

A life built around law and scholarship

Born in Lagos on May 23, 1934, Kasunmu belonged to a generation of Nigerian lawyers who helped shape the country’s legal profession during the years surrounding independence and the decades that followed.

He was educated at Elizabeth Fowler Memorial School, Reagan Memorial Baptist School and Baptist Academy in Lagos before proceeding to University College London, where he studied law. He subsequently studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and later at Columbia University School of Law in the United States.

He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1964 and began an academic career that would run alongside his legal practice.

Kasunmu lectured at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, from 1964 to 1971 before moving to the University of Lagos. He became a professor of law in 1973 and served as Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1973 to 1975.

His academic reputation was established early. Among his published works was Nigerian Family Law, published in 1966, a work that became part of the literature on Nigerian family law and reflected his longstanding interest in the relationship between law, society and Nigerian legal institutions.

From academia to public office

Kasunmu’s career was not confined to the university or the courtroom.

After serving as Dean of Law at the University of Lagos, he became Attorney-General of Lagos State, a position he held from 1975 to 1978.

He returned to private legal practice in 1978, establishing Professor A.B. Kasunmu’s Chambers, which went on to become one of the enduring names in Nigerian legal practice.

The chambers, founded in 1978, developed practices covering litigation, dispute resolution, corporate and commercial law, property, family law, taxation, maritime law, intellectual property and other areas. Its current profile describes the firm as having represented multinational corporations, financial institutions and private clients and as having been involved in significant litigation before Nigerian courts.

SAN since 1979

Kasunmu was conferred with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 1979, placing him among the earliest recipients of the prestigious rank.

The Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria currently lists him as its most senior SAN, noting that he had held that distinction since 1979 and had served as Vice-Chairman of the organisation.

His name also appears in numerous reported Nigerian cases, including proceedings before the Supreme Court.

In Co-operative & Commerce Bank (Nigeria) Plc v. Attorney-General of Anambra State, decided by the Supreme Court in 1992, Kasunmu appeared as counsel for the appellant. He also appeared in International Textile Industries (Nigeria) Ltd v. Aderemi, a 1999 Supreme Court decision.

His chambers has continued to identify several reported cases handled by the firm as significant decisions on questions ranging from injunctions and commercial law to arbitration, capital markets and civil procedure.

One of the cases associated with his practice was Kasunmu v. Securities and Exchange Commission, a Court of Appeal decision which examined issues concerning the role of legal practitioners in capital-market transactions under Nigeria’s securities legislation.

A teacher whose influence extended beyond the classroom

For generations of Nigerian lawyers, Kasunmu’s influence extended beyond the cases in which his name appeared.

His career combined three worlds that rarely coexist for so long at the same level: university scholarship, public legal service and private advocacy.

His time at the University of Lagos placed him among the academics who helped shape legal education in the country at a formative period, while his years in government brought him directly into the administration of justice and public law.

Private practice then gave him a platform from which he continued to practise, write, mentor younger lawyers and build a legal institution around his name.

The annual Professor A.B. Kasunmu, SAN Lecture, established in his honour, became another expression of that continuing influence. The ninth edition was held at the University of Lagos in July 2019 and featured a lecture on democracy, federalism and national unity.

A legacy measured in institutions

Kasunmu’s death closes a long chapter in the history of Nigerian legal education and advocacy.

He belonged to a generation that entered the legal profession when Nigeria was still developing many of the institutions that now define its legal system. Over the decades, he moved between academia, government and private practice, leaving a record that was unusual for its breadth and longevity.

His chambers, founded nearly five decades ago, remains part of the legal profession he helped shape. The firm says it has built its practice around litigation, dispute resolution and legal advisory work and continues to handle matters before courts across Nigeria.

For the family, however, the professor, SAN and former Attorney-General was first a husband and father, and later a grandfather and great-grandfather.

The family said they were taking solace in the life he lived and the people he influenced.

“May his gentle soul rest in perfect peace,” the statement said.

Funeral arrangements and visitation details will be announced by the family.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

At 37, she went back to JAMB. Then she became a doctor

Married, a mother of three and already working as a laboratory technician, Damilola Odukoya returned to the classroom more than two decades after her first attempt at JAMB and refused to let age decide when her dream would end

By the time Damilola Odukoya returned to JAMB at 37, life had already given her plenty of reasons to settle for the career she had built.

She was married, had three children and was working full-time as a laboratory technician in a hospital. She had already established a family and a profession, and the years that had passed since her first attempt at the university entrance examination could easily have been taken as evidence that the opportunity to study medicine had come and gone.

Instead, she sat for JAMB again.

More than two decades after her first attempt, Odukoya secured admission to the University of Lagos to study Medicine and Surgery, beginning a journey that would eventually take her from the laboratory to the medical profession.

It was not a convenient time to start again.

She had three children to raise, one of them still a baby, while the demands of medical school were hardly compatible with the responsibilities of a working mother. At one point, she took study leave from her job so she could devote herself fully to her medical education.

Her younger classmates also noticed the difference in age and experience.

Some affectionately called her “Mummy”.

Rather than allowing the label to remind her that she had arrived later than most of them, Odukoya embraced the role and continued with the same course as everyone else: lectures, examinations, practicals, long hours of study and the relentless demands of medical training.

In 2022, she graduated from the University of Lagos College of Medicine.

The certificate marked the completion of a medical degree, but it also represented something less easily captured by a graduation photograph: the fulfilment of an ambition that had survived more than twenty years, marriage, motherhood, employment and the ordinary pressures that persuade many people to abandon plans they once held dear.

The dream that refused to disappear

Odukoya’s story challenges one of the most persistent assumptions about education and career — that there is a particular age at which people are expected to have made the important choices of their lives.

In practice, lives rarely follow such neat schedules.

People postpone university because of family circumstances, financial difficulties, work, illness or other responsibilities. Some abandon ambitions because the opportunity disappears. Others make peace with a different career and carry an old dream quietly for years.

Odukoya appears to have belonged to a different category: people who eventually decide that the dream is still worth pursuing.

Research on what economists describe as “late bloomers” provides useful context. A 2023 study by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that about one in five college graduates in the US obtained their degrees after the age of 30. The researchers found that later educational attainment has made a substantial contribution to overall growth in college completion, challenging the assumption that higher education is predominantly an early-adulthood achievement.

The phenomenon is not simply about academic qualifications.

Returning to education later in life often means entering a world in which the student has responsibilities that younger classmates do not yet carry. Adult learners may have jobs, children, mortgages, marriages or other family obligations competing for the same time required for lectures, assignments and examinations.

Research on adult learners has identified flexibility, supportive relationships and accommodating educational environments among the factors that can help students persist when they return to education.

Odukoya’s experience illustrates the human side of those findings.

Medical school with a baby at home

Medical school is demanding for any student. For Odukoya, the challenge was compounded by the responsibilities waiting for her outside the lecture hall.

She was not simply preparing for examinations. She was raising three children, managing a marriage and carrying the weight of having already established a working life before becoming a medical student.

One of her children was still a baby when she embarked on the course.

The decision to take study leave from her employment therefore became part of the sacrifice required to keep the dream alive. The laboratory career she had already built had to make room for a much larger undertaking.

Her husband, Abiodun Odukoya, remained an important source of support throughout the journey.

That support matters because resilience is rarely as simple as the popular version of the word suggests. People do not necessarily overcome difficult circumstances through determination alone. Family support, financial resources, relationships, institutional flexibility and previous experience can all influence whether someone is able to persist when circumstances become difficult.

Research into educational resilience has similarly examined how personal and family resources can help people return to education after leaving it earlier in life.

In Odukoya’s case, the decision to return was personal, but sustaining it required a network around her.

Older than her classmates, but not out of place

Being considerably older than most of her classmates could easily have become another obstacle.

Instead, it became one of the distinctive features of her university experience.

The younger students who called her “Mummy” were not simply acknowledging her age. They were also recognising the different life she brought into the classroom.

While many of her classmates were moving directly from secondary school into university, Odukoya arrived with years of employment behind her, a marriage, three children and experience in a hospital laboratory.

She had already seen part of the healthcare system from the perspective of a laboratory technician.

Medical school offered her the opportunity to see it from another side.

That experience may also help explain why her story resonates beyond the familiar message that it is “never too late”. She was not starting from nothing.

She was building on a life she had already lived.

A second chance after two decades

There is another detail that gives the story greater emotional depth.

Odukoya had to wait five years after her marriage before having her first child. By the time she returned to education, she had become a mother of three and had established herself professionally.

Her path therefore did not involve putting life on hold until the dream was achieved. She pursued the dream while living the life that had developed around her.

Many people imagine that achieving a major ambition requires clearing everything else away first. Odukoya’s experience suggests something more difficult: sometimes the ambition has to be pursued in the middle of everything else.

The children still need attention. The job still exists. The family still has responsibilities. Bills still have to be paid. There is no empty stretch of life waiting for the perfect moment.

The perfect moment, if it comes at all, may have to be created inside an already crowded life.

What late bloomers teach us

The phrase “late bloomer” can itself be misleading because it assumes that achievement has a universally correct timetable.

A person who graduates at 22 may be early by one measure and unprepared by another. Someone who graduates at 37 may appear late when compared with classmates, yet arrive with a maturity, professional experience and clarity of purpose that cannot be measured by age.

Research on later-life educational achievement increasingly complicates the idea that education must happen within a narrow window. The NBER research found that late educational attainment has played a much larger role in overall college completion than conventional measures focused on young graduates would suggest.

Other research on returning adult students describes some of these learners as “tenacious persisters” because their return to education follows years of interruption or delay and often involves overcoming barriers that conventional students do not encounter.

Odukoya’s story fits that broader pattern, but with a Nigerian dimension that makes it particularly compelling.

Here, where educational and professional opportunities can be heavily shaped by age, family responsibilities and economic circumstances, starting again can require considerably more than academic ability.

It requires the willingness to ignore the voice that says the opportunity has passed.

The lesson in her story

There is a tendency to celebrate success only when it arrives early.

Young entrepreneurs are celebrated for building companies in their twenties. Young professionals are praised for reaching senior positions before 30. The culture of achievement often makes speed look like a measure of talent.

But lives do not develop at the same pace.

Some people find their direction early. Others discover it after years of uncertainty. Some reach their first major goal quickly. Others take a longer route because circumstances intervene.

Odukoya’s journey belongs to the second category.

Her first JAMB attempt did not produce the career she wanted. The years that followed brought marriage, children and employment. None of those developments ended her ambition, however. When she eventually decided to try again, she did so with considerably more responsibilities than she had carried as a younger woman.

She also had something she did not have at her first attempt: years of life experience and a much clearer understanding of what she wanted.

At 37, she walked back into the examination system.

In 2022, she walked out of the University of Lagos College of Medicine as a medical graduate.

The journey took longer than she had originally imagined.

It did not make the destination any less valuable.

If anything, the years in between gave the achievement a meaning that a conventional four- or six-year journey could never quite have carried.

For anyone who believes that a missed opportunity becomes a permanently closed door, Damilola Odukoya’s story offers a different possibility.

Sometimes the door remains open.

Sometimes it takes twenty years to find the courage to walk through it.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

Nigeria Trained Her. America Now Has Her: How a pioneering Nigerian neurosurgeon rose to Medical Director in the US

Dr Salamat Aliu-Ibrahim’s appointment to lead a US children’s clinic marks another milestone in a remarkable career — and offers a fresh window into the loss of highly trained Nigerian health professionals to better-resourced healthcare systems abroad

When Dr Salamat Ahuoiza Aliu-Ibrahim became Nigeria’s first indigenous-trained female neurosurgeon, she was entering a medical specialty in which women were still conspicuously underrepresented and in which the demands placed on specialists extended far beyond the acquisition of a medical degree.

Her achievement was significant not only because she became a pioneer for women in Nigerian neurosurgery, but also because she did so through a healthcare system whose limitations have since become one of the principal reasons highly trained Nigerian professionals seek opportunities elsewhere.

More than a decade after establishing herself as a neurosurgeon in Nigeria, Aliu-Ibrahim has reached another significant milestone thousands of kilometres away.

On July 21, 2026, she was appointed Medical Director of Freeman Children’s Clinic in Joplin, Missouri, placing a Nigerian-trained medical pioneer in a senior leadership position within the American healthcare system.

Her journey from Ilorin to Missouri is an extraordinary personal story, but it also sits within a much larger Nigerian story: the continuing migration of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and other health professionals whose skills are increasingly being deployed in countries that can offer better infrastructure, remuneration, professional development and working conditions.

Aliu-Ibrahim’s career is particularly instructive because her move to the United States was not a straightforward transfer from one neurosurgical system to another. After relocating, she was unable to secure a US neurosurgery residency position and instead retrained in paediatrics, eventually building a new career in the specialty and rising to a leadership position.

The result is a career that demonstrates both the resilience of the individual professional and the ability of a better-resourced system to absorb, retrain and deploy expertise developed elsewhere.

The woman who broke a medical barrier

Born in Ilorin, Kwara State, in 1980 and a native of Okene in Kogi State, Aliu-Ibrahim studied medicine at the University of Ilorin before pursuing specialist training in neurosurgery.

She trained at the National Hospital, Abuja, and later worked as a consultant neurosurgeon at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, where she handled complex cranial and spinal procedures.

Her qualification represented a historic moment. She became Nigeria’s first female neurosurgeon and the first woman certified as a neurosurgeon in West Africa, according to records of the development of women in African neurosurgery. The Nigerian Academy of Neurological Surgeons also records her as its first female member.

The achievement came at a time when neurosurgery remained overwhelmingly male-dominated across much of Africa. Research into the participation of women in African neurosurgery has shown how limited female representation has historically been, with Nigeria itself having only a handful of female neurosurgeons among its relatively small specialist workforce.

Aliu-Ibrahim was therefore more than a specialist working in a difficult field. She was also a precedent for other Nigerian women who would later enter neurosurgery.

A second medical career in America

Her move to the United States introduced a different set of professional challenges.

Rather than simply transferring her Nigerian neurosurgical career into the American system, she had to navigate a new regulatory and training environment. She eventually completed paediatric residency training at the University of Texas Medical Branch and undertook further specialist training, including paediatric neurosurgery at Boston Children’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School.

She later established herself in paediatric medicine in Missouri, where she has now assumed the position of Medical Director of Freeman Children’s Clinic.

The transition is significant because it demonstrates what migration can mean for a highly trained professional. The move did not simply take an experienced Nigerian doctor out of one operating theatre and place her in another; it placed her in a system where she could acquire additional training, change specialties and eventually take on an administrative and clinical leadership role.

For Nigeria, the implications are far-reaching.

The numbers tell another story

Aliu-Ibrahim’s experience comes as Nigeria faces an increasingly severe shortage of health professionals.

Figures from Nigeria’s State of Health of the Nation Report 2025, cited in a recent report, indicate that 20,966 Nigerian health workers relocated abroad within one year. The figure included 3,919 doctors, 7,487 nurses and midwives, 6,861 medical laboratory professionals and 702 pharmacists.

The United Kingdom has become one of the most important destinations for Nigerian medical professionals. Data from Britain’s General Medical Council showed that 4,691 Nigerian-trained doctors joined the UK medical register between May 2023 and April 2026.

The United States and Canada have also continued to attract Nigerian doctors, with the Commonwealth Fund estimating that Nigeria requires roughly 240,000 doctors but has only about 72,000 registered with the Nigerian Medical Association. The organisation also reports that at least 2,000 Nigerian doctors leave annually for countries including the US, UK and Canada.

Those figures have consequences far beyond government statistics.

When experienced specialists leave teaching hospitals, the immediate loss is to the patients who would have depended on them, but the longer-term effect reaches into medical education, specialist training and research. Young doctors lose mentors, hospitals lose institutional experience and patients are left with fewer options for complex treatment.

The consequences are particularly serious in specialties such as neurosurgery, where the number of trained specialists is already small and the equipment and multidisciplinary support required for advanced procedures are expensive and difficult to maintain.

The infrastructure problem

The debate over Nigeria’s medical migration is often reduced to salaries, although remuneration is only one part of the problem.

Doctors require functioning hospitals in which they can practise the medicine for which they were trained. Neurosurgery, in particular, depends on reliable operating theatres, anaesthesia, imaging, intensive care, blood services, specialist nurses, rehabilitation and a multidisciplinary team capable of supporting patients before and after complex procedures.

Where those systems are unreliable, professional frustration can become as powerful a reason for migration as the prospect of a larger salary abroad.

Studies on health-worker migration from Nigeria have repeatedly identified poor working conditions, inadequate remuneration and limited opportunities for professional advancement among the factors encouraging medical professionals to seek opportunities outside the country.

For a specialist, the issue is therefore not simply where the salary is higher. It is also where the skills acquired through years of demanding training can actually be put to effective use.

The real cost to Nigeria is measured not only in the number of doctors who leave, but in the expertise, mentorship and specialist services that leave with them.

The country pays to train, others benefit

There is a difficult economic calculation behind the migration of Nigerian health professionals.

The Nigerian state, families and individuals invest heavily in medical education and specialist training. The process can take more than a decade before a doctor reaches consultant level, particularly in highly specialised fields.

When that doctor eventually moves abroad, the receiving country benefits from a professional whose fundamental medical education and much of whose specialist experience were acquired elsewhere.

The receiving system may still require the doctor to pass examinations, obtain licences and, in some cases, undertake additional training, as Aliu-Ibrahim did. But it does not have to build the professional from the beginning.

The loss therefore extends beyond the number of doctors who leave.

It includes the years of experience they have accumulated, the trainees they would have supervised, the research they might have conducted and the specialist services they could have helped establish.

This is why the migration of Nigerian doctors is ultimately a question of human capital rather than merely a question of employment.

Yet migration is not betrayal

There is an important danger in discussing the issue as though doctors who leave Nigeria have failed their country. They have not.

Medical professionals, like other citizens, have legitimate aspirations for safety, professional growth, adequate remuneration and the opportunity to work in institutions equipped to support their expertise.

Aliu-Ibrahim’s decision to pursue another career pathway in the United States illustrates precisely why simplistic arguments about patriotism do not adequately explain the phenomenon.

She did not abandon medicine. She continued training, adapted to a different healthcare system and built a new professional identity in paediatrics before rising to medical leadership.

Her achievement belongs to her, and Nigeria has every reason to celebrate it. The harder question is what the country can learn from it.

From brain drain to brain circulation

Nigeria does not necessarily have to choose between forcing professionals to remain and watching them leave permanently.

There is a third possibility: creating conditions under which Nigerian professionals abroad can remain connected to the country’s healthcare system through specialist training, research partnerships, visiting appointments, telemedicine, equipment projects and periodic clinical missions.

Such relationships would not replace the doctors who have left, but they could turn some of the consequences of migration into opportunities for knowledge transfer.

The larger task, however, remains at home.

Retaining specialists requires more than appeals to patriotism. It requires hospitals with functioning equipment, reliable power, adequate staffing, competitive remuneration, transparent career structures and opportunities for doctors to develop professionally without having to leave the country to achieve them.

The challenge is especially pressing because Nigeria continues to train doctors who are capable of competing internationally while struggling to provide a healthcare environment in which enough of them can build long-term careers.

A Nigerian success story with a sobering message

Dr Salamat Aliu-Ibrahim’s appointment in Missouri should first be celebrated for what it is: the latest achievement in the career of a woman who broke a formidable barrier in Nigerian medicine and subsequently demonstrated the ability to reinvent herself in another healthcare system.

But her story also leaves Nigeria with a much larger reflection.

The country once needed pioneers such as Aliu-Ibrahim to prove that a Nigerian woman could become a neurosurgeon. It now needs to build a health system in which the specialists it produces can see a future at home that is professionally rewarding, adequately supported and worthy of the enormous investment required to train them.

Nigeria trained her. America has now given her another platform on which to thrive.

The real policy challenge is not to resent that success, but to understand why so many of Nigeria’s finest medical professionals increasingly find their best opportunities elsewhere — and what must change before excellence in Nigerian medicine becomes something the country can retain as well as export.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

How one man overturned his life sentence and became a lawyer

Sentenced to prison for life, Isaac Wright Jr. spent more than 7 years studying law to prove his innocence. This is the story of a man who studied law while incarcerated, overturned his own conviction and became a practicing lawyer.

While serving a life sentence in prison for a crime he did not commit, Isaac Wright Jr. sought to overturn his conviction by studying New Jersey law and building his own defense. Over the next several years, he worked toward proving his innocence and even served as a paralegal for inmates while behind bars. Finally representing himself on appeal, Wright successfully overturned his kingpin conviction and life sentence in prison. 

Click here to conttinue reading.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

From Romance to Religion: How Nigeria’s scam economy is turning trust, intimacy and faith into weapons

  • * EFCC arrests Edo ‘spiritualist’ accused of using a nude video to extort $1,100 from Indian woman

An alleged spiritual intervention in Edo State has ended with a cybercrime investigation, after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested a self-acclaimed spiritualist accused of recording a woman during a purported healing ritual and later using the footage to blackmail her for money.

The suspect, identified as Odigie Moses, was arrested in Ekpoma, Edo State, after allegedly demanding $1,100 — about N1.5 million — from an Indian woman whom he had reportedly met online and convinced that he possessed spiritual powers capable of helping her overcome what she believed were life-threatening challenges.

According to the EFCC, Moses allegedly persuaded the woman to participate in a naked spiritual bath, which he recorded live without her permission. The recording, the commission said, subsequently became the weapon with which he allegedly threatened to expose her.

The woman eventually paid $1,100 to prevent the material from being released before the suspect was arrested.

The EFCC said Moses would be charged to court after investigations are concluded.

The case, however, points to something considerably larger than the alleged conduct of one self-acclaimed spiritualist.

It illustrates how Nigeria’s fraud economy is continually adapting, moving into the most intimate areas of human vulnerability — love, loneliness, sexuality, faith, financial desperation and the search for opportunity — and turning trust itself into a commodity.

When romance becomes a business model

For years, romance scams have represented one of the most recognisable forms of internet fraud associated with Nigeria. The basic formula is deceptively simple: establish an emotional connection, cultivate trust, create a crisis and eventually ask for money.

But the model has become increasingly sophisticated.

The EFCC itself describes romance and dating scams as a major form of cybercrime, warning that fraudsters exploit people searching for companionship by constructing false identities and relationships online.

In December 2024, the scale of one operation exposed in Lagos demonstrated just how organised the business has become. The EFCC arrested 792 suspects in what investigators described as a cryptocurrency investment and romance-fraud network. The operation involved Nigerians and foreign nationals, with investigators alleging that Nigerian recruits were trained to establish romantic relationships with foreign targets before victims were steered towards fraudulent investment platforms.

The case challenged the simplistic picture of the lone “Yahoo boy” operating from a bedroom.

Investigators instead uncovered something closer to an industry: computers, multiple SIM cards, foreign telephone identities, scripts, recruitment and training, with different participants apparently performing different roles in the fraud chain.

That evolution matters because the scam no longer necessarily begins with a request for money.

It can begin with affection.

It can begin with friendship.

It can begin with a job offer.

It can begin with an investment opportunity.

Or, as the Ekpoma case suggests, it can begin with a promise of spiritual help.

The scammer does not always sell love

The most striking feature of the Edo case is the change in the commodity being sold.

The suspect allegedly did not approach his victim with a conventional romance story. He allegedly offered spiritual intervention.

The woman was said to be facing serious personal difficulties and sought help from someone she believed possessed spiritual healing powers.

The alleged fraud then moved through three stages: belief, vulnerability and leverage.

First came the promise of spiritual assistance. Then came the intimate ritual, during which the victim was allegedly recorded without her knowledge. Finally came the threat.

The alleged nude recording transformed the relationship completely.

What had begun as an appeal to faith allegedly became a mechanism of financial coercion.

That is the essential logic of sextortion: obtain or manufacture intimate material and then use the victim’s fear of exposure to extract money or compliance.

INTERPOL has warned that digital sextortion is increasing across Africa, with sexually explicit images being obtained voluntarily, through deception or coercion, and in some cases generated or manipulated using artificial intelligence. Its 2025 Operation Contender 3.0 resulted in 260 arrests across 14 African countries in cases involving romance scams and sextortion.

Sextortion is no longer a side street of cybercrime

The danger is that sextortion is often treated as a particularly sordid branch of internet fraud rather than as part of a rapidly expanding digital criminal economy.

It is not. It is social engineering with sexuality as the weapon.

A fraudster does not necessarily need sophisticated hacking skills if he can persuade a victim to provide the material voluntarily — or persuade the victim to enter a situation in which the material can be secretly obtained.

Once acquired, the image or video becomes leverage.

The threat of exposure can be more powerful than the material itself because victims may fear humiliation, the loss of a marriage, damage to their careers, religious or family consequences, or public disgrace.

This is particularly significant in societies where sexual reputation can carry enormous social consequences.

And the victims are not confined to one demographic.

They can be young people, professionals, married people, religious leaders, business executives or individuals simply looking for companionship or help.

The FBI has described sextortion as a growing threat and has highlighted an earlier Nigeria-based operation that resulted in the arrest of 22 Nigerian subjects in a multinational investigation.

The scam economy is spreading across sectors

Romance is only one doorway. Investment is another.

In Nigeria, authorities have repeatedly uncovered schemes combining romantic manipulation with fraudulent cryptocurrency investments. The 2024 Lagos operation was a particularly stark example, with investigators alleging that victims were first cultivated through romantic conversations before being encouraged to invest in fictitious platforms.

Employment is another growing vulnerability.

In January 2025, the EFCC arrested 105 suspects in Abuja over an alleged online fraud scheme involving fake hotel-review jobs targeting victims in Europe and elsewhere.

Business is another.

Impersonation, phishing, fraudulent invoices and business-email compromise allow criminals to enter relationships that appear entirely professional before money is redirected.

And increasingly, the criminal economy is exploiting celebrity identity, social status and institutional credibility.

INTERPOL has identified romance baiting, investment and cryptocurrency fraud and celebrity impersonation among common tactics uncovered during Nigerian operations.

The result is a disturbing transformation. The old fraudster needed a convincing story.

The modern fraudster needs a convincing identity.

Faith can become another attack surface

The Edo case also raises a particularly uncomfortable question for Nigeria: what happens when spiritual belief itself becomes an attack surface for organised fraud?

Religion and spirituality occupy an enormous place in Nigerian social life. Millions of people routinely seek prayer, counselling, healing and spiritual intervention for problems ranging from illness to marital difficulties, financial hardship and family disputes.

That creates an obvious opportunity for anyone prepared to impersonate a spiritual authority.

The alleged conduct in Ekpoma is therefore significant not because it proves that spiritualists are involved in cybercrime — it does not — but because it demonstrates how a fraudster can potentially combine online anonymity with traditional beliefs and digital technology.

The internet provides the introduction.

Faith provides credibility.

The camera provides the evidence.

And fear provides the leverage.

That combination can be devastating.

From 419 to an economy of manipulation

Nigeria’s old 419 stereotype was built around the advance-fee fraud: a stranger promised an inheritance, government contract, business deal or other financial windfall and demanded an upfront payment.

The new fraud economy is more psychologically sophisticated.

The victim may not be promised money.

The victim may be promised love.

Or healing.

Or employment.

Or investment returns.

Or access to an influential person.

Or a solution to a private problem.

The common denominator is not the story.

It is the manipulation of trust.

Research into online romance fraud has similarly identified the construction of emotional relationships as a central mechanism through which victims are manipulated and defrauded.

That is why describing all these crimes simply as “internet fraud” can obscure what is actually happening.

The technology is only the delivery system.

The real weapon is human psychology.

The question for Nigeria

The arrest of Moses will now move into the criminal justice system, where the allegations against him will have to be tested in court.

But the larger problem will remain.

How many victims never report sextortion because they are ashamed?

How many pay because they fear their families discovering the material?

How many continue paying because the blackmailer threatens to release more?

How many victims of romance fraud refuse to believe that the person they trusted never existed?

And how many people seeking spiritual, medical, financial or professional assistance are being approached by individuals whose real objective is to obtain money, information or compromising material?

These questions are becoming increasingly important as technology makes deception cheaper and more scalable.

INTERPOL’s recent findings suggest that African cybercrime is becoming more organised and that digital sextortion is increasing across the continent.

Nigeria’s response therefore cannot be limited to arresting suspects after victims have lost money or been blackmailed.

It must also confront the infrastructure that allows these schemes to flourish: anonymous accounts, disposable SIM cards, fraudulent identities, payment channels, organised scam centres, recruitment networks and platforms that can be repeatedly abused.

The challenge is no longer simply to catch the person holding the phone.

It is to dismantle the ecosystem behind the phone.

The alleged Ekpoma spiritualist may face prosecution if the evidence supports the charges. But his case also offers a wider warning.

In the digital age, a scammer does not need to know what you own before targeting you.

He may first need to discover what you believe, whom you love, what you fear or what you desperately need. And once he finds it, that may become the price of your silence.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

2Baba, Natasha’s nightclub drama puts new marriage under fresh spotlight

From a 12-year marriage to Annie Idibia, seven children with three women and a new baby with Natasha, 2Baba’s complicated relationship history is again drawing public attention after an alleged confrontation in Abuja

The marriage between music star Innocent Idibia, popularly known as 2Baba, and Edo State lawmaker Natasha Osawaru has come under renewed public scrutiny following an alleged confrontation involving the couple outside a nightclub in Abuja on Friday night.

The incident occurred during the opening of 90s Lounge, where 2Baba was expected to perform, and quickly became a social-media talking point after videos purportedly showing the couple during the episode began circulating online.

The footage has provided only fragments of what happened, however, while the circumstances that preceded the reported confrontation remain unclear.

One account circulating online alleged that Natasha arrived at the venue before 2Baba, accompanied by some men, and waited for the singer before approaching his vehicle and demanding to speak with him. The videos in circulation do not, on their own, establish that account, although an eyewitness who claimed to have been at the scene gave a broadly similar version of events.

According to the eyewitness, Natasha approached 2Baba’s vehicle after his arrival and insisted on speaking with him before the two eventually went into the club together.

“Allegedly, 2Face and his latest wife, Natasha, haven’t been on good terms for months, and she hasn’t even been able to see him,” the eyewitness was quoted as saying. “She reportedly heard that the owner of Trukadero was opening a club called 90’s yesterday, so she went there and waited for 2Face. When he finally arrived, she rushed to his car and started making a scene, saying she wanted to see her husband and talk to him.”

Other accounts have alleged that the couple had been estranged for months and that 2Baba had told Natasha he was no longer interested in continuing the relationship. Those claims could not be independently verified.

The reported episode has nevertheless revived questions about a marriage that, from the outset, unfolded under an unusually intense public spotlight.

From Annie to Natasha

2Baba and Natasha’s relationship became public in early 2025, only weeks after the singer announced the end of his marriage to actress Annie Macaulay-Idibia.

The development generated enormous public interest because of the history behind the previous marriage. 2Baba and Annie first met in 1999, long before either became a fixture of Nigeria’s celebrity culture. Their relationship survived years of controversy before they eventually married, with their white wedding taking place in Dubai in March 2013.

They had two daughters, Isabella and Olivia.

After more than a decade of marriage, however, 2Baba announced in January 2025 that he and Annie had separated and that he had begun divorce proceedings. Annie subsequently confirmed the end of the relationship publicly. The couple’s marriage had been marked by recurring controversies, particularly those surrounding 2Baba’s relationship with Pero Adeniyi, with whom he has three children.

The separation was followed almost immediately by 2Baba’s public relationship with Natasha, an Edo State lawmaker. He proposed to her on Valentine’s Eve in February 2025, setting off another wave of public debate over the singer’s private life.

2Baba subsequently defended his decision to begin a new relationship, saying his attraction to Natasha was based less on physical appearance than on emotional compatibility and the ability to communicate freely.

The pair later formalised their relationship in a private traditional wedding ceremony in July 2025.

By November, the relationship had produced another major milestone: the birth of their son, giving 2Baba an eighth child. The baby was later publicly dedicated in church in February 2026.

Eight children, four relationships

The singer’s family history is as complex as the relationship narrative that has followed him for years.

Before his marriage to Annie, 2Baba had two sons, Nino and Zion, with Sumbo Adeoye. He also has three children — Ehikowoicho, Justin and Innocent Jr — with Pero Adeniyi.

His two daughters with Annie, Isabella and Olivia, brought the number to seven before the arrival of his son with Natasha took the total to eight.

The singer himself acknowledged the complexity of his family life during an interview earlier this year, saying he now has eight children and admitting that he had not always been the father he wanted to be.

That history has inevitably made his relationships a recurring subject of public fascination, particularly because several of the women connected to him have at different times occupied prominent places in the Nigerian entertainment and social landscape.

A marriage already under the microscope

The latest Abuja incident comes only months after 2Baba publicly rejected suggestions that Natasha controlled his movements or prevented him from performing.

In February, responding to speculation about tensions in the marriage, the singer described such reports as sensational and said disagreements were normal in relationships.

“There is nobody in this world that doesn’t get involved in disagreement once in a while,” he said at the time, dismissing claims that his wife was responsible for restrictions on his appearances.

That statement is now being revisited by social-media users following Friday night’s incident, although the latest confrontation should not, without further evidence, be treated as proof that the marriage is in crisis.

The couple have also endured intense public scrutiny since their relationship began. In December 2025, 2Baba publicly responded to allegations contained in a petition by members of his family against Natasha, including claims of bigamy, financial misconduct and assault. He rejected the allegations and said the family dispute had caused him considerable personal damage.

Neither those earlier allegations nor the latest nightclub episode, however, provides sufficient evidence by itself to establish the present state of the marriage.

For now, what is established is that videos from the Abuja nightclub have reignited intense public interest in a relationship that has been under scrutiny almost from the moment it began.

What remains unclear is what actually happened between the couple before the cameras started rolling — and whether Friday night was simply a private disagreement that spilled into public view or a sign of deeper trouble within a marriage that is barely a year old.

Sunday Scoop’s attempts to reach 2Baba’s management for clarification were unsuccessful, as the phone number was switched off as of the time of filing this report.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

The Sundiata Post Model (6): Institutional success and its four levels

By Max Amuchie | The Sunday Stew

In the preceding articles, I have argued that the twenty-first-century newsroom must evolve into a knowledge-producing institution; situated that proposition within a broader intellectual tradition; introduced the Dual Engine Architecture through which journalism and knowledge production become mutually reinforcing; and proposed the Realm of the Long Term together with its Seven Pillars as the institutional foundations of enduring organisations.

A natural question now arises.
How should the success of such an institution be measured?
For decades, the commercial media industry understandably prioritised audience size and print circulation. With the rise of digital journalism, these traditional measures were increasingly supplemented—and in many cases displaced—by page views, unique visitors, click-through rates, impressions, engagement metrics and social media reach. These indicators remain valuable because they reveal important aspects of audience behaviour and commercial performance.

Yet they do not tell the whole story.
A media organisation may attract millions of readers while producing little original knowledge. It may dominate online conversations today yet leave no enduring intellectual contribution tomorrow. It may generate impressive revenue while gradually losing public trust. Conversely, an institution may produce ideas that influence scholarship, public policy and professional practice for decades without ever becoming the largest media organisation in its market.

The central proposition of the Sundiata Post Model (SPM) is therefore straightforward: institutions should ultimately be measured not merely by what they produce, but by what they leave behind.
This requires us to rethink what institutional success actually means.

Four Levels of Institutional Success

The SPM proposes that institutional success exists at four progressively deeper levels: Operational Success, Institutional Success, Civilisational Success and Legacy.
These are not competing categories. They are successive stages in the evolution of an enduring institution.

Operational Success

Operational Success concerns an institution’s ability to perform its immediate responsibilities effectively.
For a newsroom, this includes producing accurate journalism, meeting publication deadlines, maintaining editorial standards, growing audiences, generating sustainable revenue and responding effectively to the daily demands of public communication.
These are indispensable functions. Without operational competence, institutions cannot survive.
Yet Operational Success is also the most immediate form of success. It is measured in days, weeks, months and annual performance reports.
It answers a relatively simple question:
Is the institution performing well today?
Many organisations achieve Operational Success.
Far fewer move beyond it.

Institutional Success

Institutional Success represents a deeper level of achievement.
Here, attention shifts from performance to permanence.
The institution is no longer evaluated solely by today’s output but by its ability to preserve its mission while continuously renewing itself. Leadership succession becomes important. Governance becomes important. Institutional memory becomes important. Financial resilience, knowledge stewardship, innovation, public trust and organisational culture become defining concerns.
This is the Realm of the Long Term introduced in the previous article.
The central question is no longer:
How well are we performing?
Instead, it becomes:
Will this institution remain valuable twenty, fifty or one hundred years from now?
Institutions that reach this level become larger than any individual leader.
Their systems become more important than personalities.
Their mission becomes more enduring than their founders.
This transition requires institutionalisation: the process through which an institution converts individual vision, knowledge and leadership into durable systems, structures, practices and values that can survive changes in personnel and leadership.
An institution is not truly enduring if its most important knowledge exists only in the mind of one person, if its critical relationships depend entirely upon one individual, or if its strategic direction disappears when its founder departs.
Institutionalisation is therefore one of the mechanisms through which Institutional Success becomes possible. It transforms personal capacity into institutional capacity and individual achievement into organisational inheritance.

Civilisational Success

The third level extends beyond the institution itself.
Civilisational Success concerns the institution’s contribution to society’s accumulated stock of knowledge.
It occurs when an institution produces ideas, methods, frameworks, archives, research, public debates and intellectual traditions that continue shaping society long after their immediate circumstances have passed.
At this level, the institution no longer influences only its industry.
It contributes to civilisation itself.
Its ideas become reference points.
Its publications become historical records.
Its methodologies become professional standards.
Its research becomes part of society’s collective memory.
The institution’s greatest contribution is therefore not simply the news it reported, but the knowledge it helped humanity preserve.
The SPM is itself grounded in this proposition. As a model for twenty-first-century journalism, it argues that a newsroom organised as a knowledge-producing institution should be capable of generating original intellectual contributions alongside its daily journalism. The development of The Insecurity Triad, the Trinity of Sovereignty Decay (TSD), and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI) illustrates this possibility. These frameworks did not emerge from a conventional research institute or university department, but from a newsroom deliberately organised to produce knowledge as well as news. They therefore serve as a proof of concept for one of the Model’s central propositions: journalism, when institutionally designed for long-term knowledge creation, can produce intellectual assets whose influence extends beyond the news cycle.

Legacy

Yet even Civilisational Success leaves one final question unanswered.
What is the highest measure of institutional success?
The SPM proposes a simple answer:
Legacy.
Legacy is often misunderstood. It is commonly associated with longevity, reputation or the accomplishments of exceptional individuals. While these may contribute to legacy, they do not define it.
Institutions can exist for centuries without leaving a meaningful imprint on society. Others achieve widespread recognition during their lifetime yet fade quickly from public memory once circumstances change.
Legacy is something deeper.
It measures Generational Influence—the extent to which an institution’s ideas, values, methods and contributions continue shaping future generations.
Time alone does not create legacy.
Survival should not be mistaken for significance.
The true test of an institution is not simply whether it continues to exist, but whether its existence continues to matter.
Institutions achieve legacy when successive generations continue drawing value from what they have created. Their archives remain useful. Their research continues to be consulted. Their journalism retains historical relevance. Their ideas continue shaping public debate. Their methods become part of professional practice.
Legacy therefore transforms institutional success from a temporary achievement into a continuing public resource.
Every enduring institution eventually confronts the same reality.
Its founders leave. Leadership changes.
Generations pass.
If an institution depends entirely upon the vision or personality of a single individual, succession becomes a moment of vulnerability rather than renewal.
The question, therefore, is not simply whether an institution has a great founder or an exceptional leader. It is whether the institution can transform that individual’s vision into a capacity that belongs to the institution itself.
This is the deeper meaning of institutionalisation.

From Personality to Institution

Institutionalisation requires an organisation to deliberately convert individual capacity into institutional capacity.
It begins with the institutionalisation of mission. The institution’s purpose must be sufficiently clear and durable that it belongs to the organisation rather than to the personality of its founder.
It requires systems and processes that allow critical functions to continue regardless of who occupies a particular position. An institution becomes resilient when essential work can be reproduced through established procedures rather than dependent upon individual memory or improvisation.
It requires institutional memory. Decisions, research, methodologies, archives, lessons, relationships and intellectual work must be captured and preserved. What exists only in the mind of one person is not yet fully institutional knowledge.
It requires deliberate leadership succession. The next generation of leaders cannot be an afterthought. Institutions that intend to endure must cultivate successors before succession becomes necessary.
It requires distributed knowledge and authority. Critical knowledge, relationships and decision-making capacity should not become concentrated in a single individual. The institution must develop multiple centres of competence capable of sustaining its mission.
It requires durable governance. Governing structures, accountability mechanisms and institutional principles must be strong enough to protect the mission through changes in leadership and circumstance.
And it requires an institutional culture that reproduces the values of the organisation. The deepest form of institutionalisation occurs when the institution’s values become embedded in the behaviour of successive generations rather than remaining attached to the personality of its founder.
These seven mechanisms—mission, systems, institutional memory, succession, distributed knowledge and authority, governance, and culture—help transform an institution from a personality-driven organisation into a self-renewing institution.
The test of institutionalisation is therefore straightforward:
Can the institution continue to perform, learn, adapt and create value when the person who built it is no longer there?
If the answer is yes, the institution has begun to transcend personality.
The founder’s greatest achievement, therefore, may not be what he or she accomplishes personally, but what the institution becomes capable of accomplishing without them.

The SPM therefore treats stewardship as one of the defining responsibilities of institutional leadership. Leaders are custodians rather than owners. Their responsibility is not merely to achieve success during their own tenure but to strengthen the institution so that it serves generations they will never meet.
This is also where the distinction between journalism and knowledge production becomes most visible.
Daily reporting serves the immediate needs of society.
Knowledge serves both the present and the future.
Investigations become archives.
Research becomes scholarship.
Editorial judgement becomes institutional memory.
Original frameworks become intellectual assets.
Public records become part of society’s historical inheritance.
Every institution should therefore ask itself one final question:
If this institution ceased to exist tomorrow, what knowledge would disappear with it?
The answer reveals the depth of its institutional contribution.
An institution that merely reports events leaves little behind.
An institution that produces enduring knowledge leaves future generations with resources they would otherwise never have possessed.
That is the difference between activity and inheritance.
Between success and significance.
Between performance and legacy.

Beyond Performance

This distinction matters because institutions frequently confuse activity with achievement.
Publishing thousands of stories is activity.
Building a permanent archive of public knowledge is an achievement.
Generating revenue is an activity.
Creating financial systems that preserve editorial independence across generations is an achievement.
Winning today’s audience is an activity.
Earning public trust that survives decades is an achievement.
The SPM therefore argues that enduring institutions should evaluate themselves not merely by annual outputs but by their cumulative contribution to society.
This shifts institutional thinking from production to legacy.

The Highest Measure of Success

The SPM understands institutional success as a continuum rather than a destination.
Operational Success enables performance.
Institutional Success enables endurance.
Civilisational Success enables enduring contributions to society’s accumulated knowledge.
Legacy enables an institution’s ideas, values and contributions to continue shaping future generations.
Every institution must first learn to perform.
Some will also learn to endure.
Fewer will contribute enduring value to civilisation.
Only the rarest institutions ultimately leave a legacy that continues to enrich society long after those who built them have passed.
Institutions are ultimately remembered not for how much they produced, but for what they enabled humanity to remember, understand and build upon. That is why the highest measure of institutional success is Legacy.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.

•Dr Max Nwabueze Amuchie is an African scholar-practitioner and framework builder whose original intellectual work spans insecurity, sovereignty, institutional development, and journalism as knowledge production. His frameworks include The Insecurity Triad, the Trinity of Sovereignty Decay, the Decoupling Sovereignty Index, and the Sundiata Post Model. A member of the League of Nigerian Columnists (LNC), he is the CEO & Theorist-In-Chief of Sundiata Post, Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), and an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer in Behavioural and Social Sciences at ScienceOpen.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

Dressing, addressing, and redressing Nigeria’s lawyers and judges

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“The division between the two professions was well recognised by the end of the 16th century and by the end of the 17th was quite firm….While the solicitor spends much of his time trying to keep his clients out of court, there inevitably comes a time when he needs the services of what the Americans call ‘the trial lawyer’. In England, this is the barrister….”

Richard du Cann, The Art of the Advocate, 32 (Revised Edition, 1993)

On 20 June 2011, Willy Mutunga assumed office as the first Chief Justice of Kenya under the 2010 Constitution. A former president of the Law Society of Kenya, Mutunga possessed a doctorate degree in law and had worked as a law teacher. He had also lived in internal banishment, and was a former political detainee and exile. He came to the position from a role in philanthropy as the regional representative of the Ford Foundation in East Africa and was a principal facilitator of the new constitution.

Chief Justice Mutunga’s unusual resume gave him a grounded view of law and its institutions in post-colonial society. It also equipped him to try something both necessary and ambitious. Kenya’s institutions of the law had been discredited under the old system. They desperately needed to be re-fashioned. Chief Justice Mutunga’s arrival in this role seemed timely.

One of his first tasks was to lead the transformation of the institutions of the law and the judiciary in Kenya. The process was consultative, involving magistrates, judges, judicial workers, the public, political leaders, the media, communities, citizens, and consumers.

Nearly one year into his tenure, On 31 May 2012, Chief Justice Mutunga launched a four-year long Judiciary Transformation Framework. It outlined a set of ideas designed to imbue the institutions of the law and judiciary in the country with the ethos of the new constitution.

The Transformation Framework presented a stark diagnosis of an antediluvian system, out of touch with its people and impervious to change. In a passage that could be adapted with ease to Nigeria’s institutions of law and the judiciary, Kenya’s Transformation Framework addressed itself to institutions with a “founding history of dominance, power, prestige and remoteness, as opposed to service and equality. Further, its architecture, rules, dress code and other rituals have uprooted it from social reality.” The result, the document said, was a legal system perceived by the public as both “alien and insensitive.”

One major aspect of this problem was the “dress and address” of the legal and judicial institutions. Many an aspiring career in post-colonial law is drawn to it by the attractions of the dressing of lawyers and judges, as well as the manner in which they are addressed.

The original rationales for these were revelatory. It turns out that among the most compelling of the rationales, there is “a theatrical aspect [that] seeks to impress on laymen”, gives members of the profession “a useful anonymity and conformity”, and seeks to disguise members of the profession “to protect them from revenge-seeking defendants.”

In the end, Kenya’s judges voted “to discard the wigs because in their words they are ‘torturous’, ‘colonial relics’, ‘cumbersome’, ‘lack uniformity’, ‘uncomfortable’, and ‘antique.’” They also voted to re-design the judicial robe and to dispense with “My Lord.” They are now addressed as “Your Honor.” In Kiswahili, that translates into “Mheshimiwa.”

Surprisingly, Kenya’s courts and legal vocation have not collapsed. Instead, they seem to have made progress.

Kenya is not the only country where this has occurred. In 2011, the Bar in Punjab and Haryana in India dispensed with addressing the bench as “My Lord” or “Your Lordship”, calling such appellations “relics of the colonial past”.

In June 2022, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Orissa in India, Srinivasan Muralidhar, issued a written notice requiring advocates and court users to “try and avoid addressing the judges of this bench as ‘My Lord’, ‘Your Lordship’, ‘Your Honour’ or with the prefix ‘Hon’ble. Any form of address consistent with the decorum of the court, including ‘Sir’, should suffice.”

The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) triggered a muted debate on these matters of dress and address in the vocations of the law and the judiciary when she directed the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court to issue a circular on 13 July 2026 under the title “Prohibition of the Use of the Title ‘Barrister’ as a Prefix to Names.”  

In a country in which sundry crooners and Karaoke wannabes of diverse genres self-identify as “Barrister”, the heading of the Chief Registrar’s circular initially seemed ostentatious. It suggested a magical capacity to – in one swoop – end Nigeria’s fixation with grand prefixes and bland suffixes.

The circular made it clear that it was directed at “official correspondence, records, documents, identity materials, and any other official engagements.” This begs the question what an official engagement could be. Does it extend to political rallies, cabinet meetings, or convocation grounds?

The reason given by the CJN is that the use of “Barrister” as prefix “is inappropriate and inconsistent with the standards of professionalism expected within the Supreme Court.” The safeguarding of standards in the legal profession is indeed an elevated goal but there are at least three substantial objections to the circular.

First, it suffers from a crisis of the wrong priorities. It is evidently piddling to fixate on paraphernalia and prefixes in a country whose legal and judicial vocations suffer terminal tarnish from many more serious ailments.

Second, the circular wore an appearance of regimental diktat. The CJN missed an opportunity to undertake an inclusive and consultative process aimed at transforming the pointless antiquarianisms that define Nigeria’s legal and judicial process.

Third, there was a touch of “physician heal thyself” about it. A judiciary in which even female judges bristle implacably at not being called “My Lord” could have been a suitable point of departure for the Chief Justice’s re-brand.

The prefix that vexes the CJN is itself part of the colonial baggage that she presides over. The legal profession in England, from where Nigeria borrowed its vocational strait-jackets, has been divided between barristers and solicitors for five centuries.

Christopher Sapara Williams first enrolled at the Inns of Court in England in 1879. In 1888, he became the first barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. That was 18 years after the foundation of the Law Society of England and Wales and six before the Bar Council.

In those days, lawyers were rare; transactions were few, and the role of the lawyer was defined by advocacy before the white man’s court. They became lawyers in Nigeria because they were members of the Bar in England. The appellation “Barrister” easily caught on and held.

In many parts of Nigeria, various neighbourhoods still have different appellations for their local professionals. From “Dokkie” for the medical doctor to “Deelaw” for the lawyer. Lawyer and elite footballer, Adokiye Amiesimaka, was called famously designated “Chief Justice” by commentator, Ernest Okonkwo, and it stuck. The CJN cannot possibly presume to abolish those.

In reality, “Barrister” only partly describes what a lawyer is or can do. In that sense, it is somewhat of a mis-representation. As such, it is also not a fitting professional title or courtesy. But that is relatively minor beside the issues that ail Nigeria’s legal profession.

As Richard du Cann writes, “the word ‘advocate’ is applied to both barristers and solicitors in all courts and tribunals other than the Crown Court and the High Court.” In many parts of East and Southern Africa, lawyers are called “Advocate”. In South Africa where the vocation of the law is divided as in England, “Advocate” only refers to those enrolled as barristers.

How we dress and address legal and judicial vocations in Nigeria is important. But even more important is whether we care to redress the lost mission and ethos of those institutions. Nigeria’s Chief Justice may have missed an opportunity with her piddling circular, but it is not too late for her to retrieve a sense of direction.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected] 

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

1...141516...1,470Page 15 of 1,470

TIPS

Load more