A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Deputy Director-General, Nigerian Law School and pioneer Head of Yenagoa Campus, Bayelsa State, Prof. Festus Emiri has expressed concern over the state the legal profession in Nigeria.
Weeks ago, a survey conducted and published by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, revealed that Nigeria’s public officials received N721billion cash bribes in 2023, with judges topping the list of the recipients. This has continued to generate reactions.
After the publication, Olu Fasan a Visiting Fellow in the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics (LSE),and a senior adviser on energy and climate change policy with the UK Government warned that, “This is not a trivial matter. Judges are next to God in terms of their powers: they can order the incarceration or execution of a person; they can decide who is a legislator or a governor; they can set a country in any direction.’
Continuing, he stated that: “Recently, the Supreme Court changed the Constitution in the local government autonomy case, and everybody said whatever the court says is final. Yet, last year, the respected senior lawyer, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, told Channels TV: ‘I’ve lost confidence in what the courts have been doing lately,” adding that “facts and law no longer form the basis of Supreme Court decisions.’ But if facts and law don’t influence the decisions of judges, if, instead, bribery and political pressure determine their rulings, what is the future of a country suffused with such judges? It’s a dreadful future indeed! “
In a recent publication titled “Nigerian Bar Association – dead and buried”, the Duke of Shomolu said: “The judiciary has been made a mockery by the cascading collapse of values in the general society and also by the inherent indiscipline and collapse of ethical guidelines within their fold and this is why, today the NBA is but a caricature of its former self. Should we cry for them?”
Prof. Festus Emiri, SAN captures the situation this way: “Sad that the profession of law that should help society is itself in need of redemption in Nigeria.
“It is a shame that the judiciary has largely snowballed from being the “last” to the “lost” hope of the common man, subjecting itself to “deep-pocket” capture.
“There’s no doubt that some of our judges are honest and competent but like lawyers (and I dare say even law teachers inclusive) a bunch are morally deficient.
“When some of us read unnecessary long court opinion some spanning over hundreds of pages we simply conclude like the famous literary scholar George Orwell in “Shooting the Elephant” that “when there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms.”
“Who can blame Dick the Butcher in Henry VI call: the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
“Sad and I hope our profession in Nigeria doesn’t suffer like the disgraced science of phrenology. Respected colleagues this is my one kobo contribution.”
