By Lillian Okenwa
Admonitions that junior lawyers in Nigeria should imbibe the virtue of integrity and hard work in their practices have continued to pour in over the ages. Likewise, senior lawyers never hesitate at every opportunity to charge younger members of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) to defend and uphold the tenets of the legal profession.
But, junior members of the bar have their fair share of complaints against seniors. Indeed a former Director-General of Nigerian Law School (NLS) and Vice Chancellor of Baze University, Abuja, Professor Tahir Mamman SAN, said some time ago that the critical problem confronting the legal profession was the slave wages paid to young lawyers in the country.
Prof Mamman who in a newspaper interview said he cannot comprehend why some young lawyers were paid as little as N1000 appearance fees added: “My heart bleeds for young lawyers in Nigeria who are facing profound survival issues. A lot can’t find a job and many who are in chambers are paid slave wages. These to me are the critical problems before the Bar and the legal profession.”
Meanwhile, a Former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof Chidi Odinkalu recently got embroiled in a Twitter argument with a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Jibrin.S. Okutepa over what he termed as Okutepa’s disdain for junior lawyers.
Below are some of their exchanges.
