By Sir Agabaidu Chukwuemeka Jideani
My personal view is that there are so many dishonesty and deception in this matter on both sides.
1. NBA wants to checkmate “quacks” by issuing stamps to authenticate genuine lawyers – good move.
2. Courts extended it by insisting that processes without NBA issued stamps or evidence of payment for those stamps will be deemed defective… (There is no Law that empowered the Court’s to do so, access to courts is guaranteed all citizens whether lawyer or not)…
3. Legal Practitioners are admitted to practice in Nigeria ONLY by the Supreme Court…
4. Supreme Court issues its admitted Legal Practitioners with “Unique Identifiers” – the Supreme Court Numbers – no two Legal Practitioners have the same numbers… (This should be utilized to check ‘quacks’ if we want to);
5. The Supreme Court enrolls all the Legal Practitioners and issues (or ought to issue) Practice License to practitioners who have been admitted to practice law in Nigeria and who have paid their practicing fees for the relevant year and this license is renewed annually upon payment of Practice Fees;
6. The NBA does not admit people to practice law in Nigeria and the NBA do not issue or renew Practice License (What Exactly does the NBA stamp and seal do?);
7. The Supreme Court should in the process of the annual renewal of Practice License through the payment of annual Practice Fee issue licenses in the form of adhesive stamp and seal to signify that one is a licensed Legal Practitioner in Nigeria in good standing for the relevant period;
8. This Supreme Court “Stamp and Seal” should be uniform for all Legal Practitioners irrespective of whether one is in private or public bar, inner or outer bar or no bar at all – this will achieve the NBA goal of checking “quacks” and solve the issue of freedom of Association for Practitioners who do not want to join the Association…
There may be other solutions, but this is my submission!
