By Joseph .B. Daudu, SAN
This recent acts assaulting the ability and capacity of legal practitioners to ply their trade unmolested is not coincidental, yet we (lawyers) sit down arms akimbo, with jaws in our hands, signifying helplessness as our livelihood is being buffeted from every side.
In the past 3 days, some cascading events have led me to conclude that our cherished profession is under siege. First, a Nigerian born Minister in the UK cabinet comes in to attend a highly publicized event waving in the process, a treaty or trade agreement that British or UK lawyers can now practice law in Nigeria contrary to the letter and spirit of the Legal Practitioners Act.
Secondly, the Enugu State Judiciary has decreed that lawyers should attach their tax clearance certificates to every legal process filed in court.
Thirdly the National Assembly yesterday stepped down a Bill seeking to compel legal practitioners to declare their professional fee and pay a mandatory percentage thereof as tax to Government outside of the personal income tax, VAT and withholding tax that they already collect.
Yet my brethren are quiet. These proposals demonstrate if we don’t know it already that there is a concerted and daring assault on the legal profession among other professions in Nigeria.
Naturally, we might be tempted to see these measures as ‘hare brained schemes’ that will not go anywhere. But this is how it starts and before we know it haters of lawyers would have legislated us out of economic and socio – political relevance.
That these illegalities will be proposed by haters or the Sambalats to and of the legal profession is not unexpected, what is baffling is lazy silence of those affected by these illegal hare brained measures. So what do I expect?
1 Enugu lawyers should within 7 days challenge that directive seeking to compel lawyers to attach tax clearance certificates to filed processes in court before they can be granted audience in court or even access to justice and also seek injunction restraining the enforcement of such a measure until the substantive suit is determined.
- Kudos to the President of the NBA Mr Yakubu Maikyau SAN for taking proactive measures to criticize and force a reversal of the push to have British based lawyers come into Nigeria to take over our briefs. That demon appears to have been exorcized for now but you can bet your bottom Naira on it, they will be back. It is just a strategic retreat.
3 This one in which the NA ‘stepped down’ the Bill which seeks to compel legal practitioners to pay a percentage of their earning per brief as taxes is also squarely in the NBA’s court. We cannot usurp your functions. Wipe this shame from the face of the legal profession. Meanwhile I suggest that the theme of the next NBA annual conference should be ‘The future of the legal profession in Nigeria in the face of internal and external assaults and aggression’. A word is enough for the learned.
