By Jibrin S. Okutepa, SAN
All is not well with the legal profession in Nigeria.The actions and decisions of some members of the legal profession have eroded the confidence of the members of the general public in both adjudications in courts and tribunal and even in legal practice. Lawyers are no more respected because Nigerians, in most cases, see lawyers as the problems of Nigeria. The general public sees the legal profession as problem creators in Nigeria.
The disgrace to which the legal profession is put in Nigeria by the decisions of some courts is not in the best interest of the sanctity of the profession.The silence of the leadership of the legal profession to the desecration of the sanctity and purity of justice in Nigeria seems to have made the public think that the leadership of the legal profession is an accomplice to these ignoble roles of some members of the bar and the bench.
Look at the injuctions and counter injunction flying here and there in Nigeria in political spaces and chieftaincy cases in Nigerian courts, both Federal and states High Courts. The rules of the games of justice and that of adjudication have been lowered to accommodate primordial partisan interests and to the prejudices of absolute fidelity to purity of justice.
The absurdities of the orders flying from these courts cry to high heavens seeking the immediate intervention of the leadership of the legal profession. The legal profession needs to be saved from self-inflicted injuries by all those that do not mean well for the pure and the unpolluted justice.
The leadership of the bar and the bench can not sit and fold their arms comfortably as if nothing is happening. The legal profession is sick, and it is being strangulated by those who should protect it from political and economic interferences and manipulations.
Adjudication should not be a function of commercial and partisan interest. We are heading to the calamitous end of true and pure adjudication in Nigeria.
Oh, that the leadership of the legal profession can wake up now and save the profession from extinction. Sanctions must be visited appropriately and not lightly. It has to be now.
Nigerians are sick and tired of the sacrilegious naked dances of the bar and the bench in market places.The awe of the once noble profession, the legal profession and the light that that profession represents have been overgrown, overthrown, and overshadowed by unethical rascality of activities of some known members of the legal profession.
Those who filed frivolous processes in both wrong and right courts and those who adjudicated over these downright frivolous processes must be fished out and punished appropriately. Legal processes must not be turned to tales by moonlight. We must not be ridiculed further.The odium and disrepute are becoming too dangerous for comfort.
When I speak of the leadership of the legal profession, I speak about the Hon Body of Benchers, NJC, NBA, BOSAN, and the office of the Hon the Attorneys-General of the Federation and those of the States. Unless something is done urgently and the leadership of the legal profession does what are in the best interest of Nigerians and Nigeria, by immediately bringing all those who have brought the legal profession to its knees, the legal profession will soon come to the painful but calamitous end in the most unfortunate disgraceful manner.
It is important that the leadership of the profession I have identified above call for an emergency meeting and to do something now to save the legal profession from complete disgrace and relevance in the scheme of things in Nigeria. It has to be now. Time to act is now.
