Kingsley Jesuorobo
Mixed reactions have trailed the interim suspension imposed by the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) on Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN.
In my respectful view, the hand of those who have questioned the decision is strengthened when the issue is viewed against the antecedents of disciplinary regulation within the Nigerian legal profession. The issue is not whether Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, should ultimately be exonerated or sanctioned—that is a matter for the appropriate disciplinary process.
Rather, the real concern is whether the LPPC has applied a consistent and principled standard in resorting to the exceptional measure of an interim suspension before the disciplinary process has run its course.
The profession’s recent history raises legitimate questions about consistency.
The legal profession has witnessed previous controversies involving senior members of the Bar, including office holders within its own regulatory architecture.
During the 2022 Saipem controversy, serious allegations connected with the law firm of Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, then Chairman of the Body of Benchers, generated widespread public concern. Two successive Presidents of the Nigerian Bar Association publicly called upon him to recuse himself from presiding over the Body of Benchers while the disciplinary process was pending. Yet there was no immediate suspension of his rank as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria or any comparable interim disciplinary measure. Instead, the disciplinary machinery was permitted to determine whether there was sufficient evidence implicating him personally.
The Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) ultimately declined to proceed against him personally for want of evidence linking him to the impugned conduct, although disciplinary sanctions were later imposed on the partner directly responsible.
Similarly, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, has himself previously been the subject of serious regulatory action. The EFCC froze his professional fees in a widely publicised matter, yet the Court of Appeal ultimately vindicated his position, holding that the seizure of his professional fees was unlawful. That history serves as a caution against equating allegations, however serious or publicly sensational, with established professional misconduct.
The present London property litigation undoubtedly contains grave judicial findings. However, the gravity of those findings does not answer the anterior question: why has the LPPC considered it appropriate to impose an interim suspension before the disciplinary process has reached its conclusion when previous controversies involving equally prominent members of the profession did not attract comparable treatment?
Whether one agrees with the outcomes in any of these cases is beside the point.
The rule of law demands consistency in administrative decision-making. Like cases should be treated alike unless a rational and publicly articulated basis exists for distinguishing them. If interim suspension is now to become the governing standard whenever allegations of sufficient gravity arise, the LPPC ought to articulate that standard with clarity and demonstrate that it is being applied uniformly rather than selectively.
Otherwise, the measure risks creating the appearance—not necessarily the reality—of unequal treatment, thereby undermining confidence in the fairness, predictability, and institutional integrity of the disciplinary process.
The decision also gives rise to a deeper conceptual difficulty.
Chief Ozekhome, SAN, has not been suspended from legal practice. He remains entitled to practise as a legal practitioner, to appear before the courts, advise clients, and discharge all the professional obligations imposed upon every member of the Nigerian Bar. The only deprivation is his entitlement to practise as a member of the Inner Bar.
That distinction itself invites a fundamental question. If the allegations are considered sufficiently grave to justify an extraordinary interim suspension from the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria before the disciplinary process has been concluded, why are they not considered sufficiently grave to warrant an interim suspension from legal practice altogether? Conversely, if the allegations have not yet been judicially or disciplinarily established to the extent necessary to justify depriving him of his licence to practise law, what principled basis justifies the premature withdrawal of the professional distinction attached to the rank of SAN?
The point is not that the LPPC lacks authority over the rank of Senior Advocate. It plainly possesses that authority. Rather, the question is whether the exercise of that authority in advance of a final disciplinary determination produces a coherent regulatory outcome.
The decision appears to create a two-tier conception of professional character: one standard for members of the Inner Bar and another for every other legal practitioner. Yet the Legal Practitioners Act and the Rules of Professional Conduct impose the same fundamental ethical obligations upon every lawyer, irrespective of rank. Honesty, integrity, fidelity to the court, and good character are not elevated duties owed only by Senior Advocates; they are universal obligations binding upon every member of the profession.
If character is indeed indivisible, then its regulatory assessment ought also to be coherent. Either the allegations justify restrictions on the right to practise because they disclose a present risk to the administration of justice, or they await determination through the ordinary disciplinary process before any punitive consequence is imposed. To conclude that a lawyer possesses sufficient character to continue practising before every court in Nigeria while simultaneously determining that he lacks sufficient character to retain the honour of the Inner Bar before those same allegations have been finally adjudicated is a position that requires far more careful justification than the LPPC has thus far provided.
That tension further reinforces the criticism that the interim suspension is not merely severe but premature. It risks transforming what is intended to be a protective administrative measure into an anticipatory sanction, imposed before the disciplinary process has reached the stage at which findings of professional misconduct have been properly made.
The issue, therefore, transcends Chief Mike Ozekhome.
Every lawyer, whether a member of the Inner Bar or the Outer Bar, has a vested interest in a disciplinary regime that is principled, predictable and consistently applied. Confidence in professional regulation is not built by the severity of sanctions but by the certainty that like cases will be treated alike and that extraordinary measures will be exercised only in accordance with clearly articulated standards.
If the LPPC’s decision marks the beginning of a new regulatory philosophy, then the profession deserves to know that this philosophy will be applied uniformly, irrespective of personality, influence or public sentiment. If, however, no such principled distinction can be articulated, then the criticism is not merely about Chief Ozekhome; it is about preserving the coherence, legitimacy and moral authority of the disciplinary system itself.
The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.
