By Chief Jibrin Samuel Okutepa, SAN
No matter what, the profession God blessed me to be a member of is the legal profession.It is a good profession.I am proud to be a lawyer. Be that as it may I am sad that the profession is not doing well to help and install good governance and accountability in Nigeria.
I think the legal profession must save Nigeria and Nigerian democracy. The legal profession must rise above partisan and narrow parochial interest to save itself from being ridiculed or further being ridiculed. There are many wrong things the profession has been overlooking and has become tolerant of, which are almost destroying the profession.
The profession must return to its root of being ruled and guided by its Rules of professional conduct whether at the Bar or on the Bench. It is these Rules of Professional conduct in the legal profession that make the profession the envy of all then. The founding fathers of the legal profession were not tolerant of appearances of impunity and improprieties as it being encouraged today. The legal profession must rediscover itself and return to the enviable position it occupied in those days when it was feared and commanded respect of all.
The awe of the profession is almost gone for bad.The legal profession was known as profession with purity of justice and intorant of appearances of improprieties. The legal profession is the only profession that has an arm of government exclusively devoted to its members. It is the one that has authority clothed with the garment of constitutional power to decide disputes with courage without fair or Favour affections or ill will. Today things seemed to be falling apart. The legal profession must be ready to apply sanctions on itself and its members to engenders confidence in the Nigerian people. It appears to me that unless the legal profession retraces its steps and rediscover its root, the profession will soon lose its relevance to the Nigerian society.
I call on all well meaning members of the legal profession both at the Bar and on the Bench to save the legal profession from the self inflicted embarrassment the profession has found itself in Nigeria. We have pretended enough. We must put an end to a situation where the profession is used to destroy justice or deny justice on the altar of political considerations. The legal profession in those days had the venomous spirit and authority that no one dare to play with.No one plays with snake and hit the mouth. But today it appears not only do people play with the snake and hit the mouth, it appears the have over played with the mount of snakes and pocketed them. We must wake from our slumber as a profession.
The NBA must the vanguard of the rule of law and democracy. In doing so, the leadership of the association must be above board. The Nigerian Bar Association must wake up. In those days I know NBA has a committee called Legislative Advocacy Committee that ensures that laws made by the Legislative Arm of Government meet the standards or the purposes of law. Today I do not know whether that committee exists. If it does, then it must do something and very urgently too on the Electoral Act 2026. Many laws are made that are anti-justice and the practice of law. I will take the Electoral Act 2026 as one example.
When I read through the new Electoral Act, 2026 and I saw the provisions of section 83(6)(a) and (b), and section 138 thereof and many other provisions I became worried. In my honest view section 83(6)(a), and 138(3) of the Act, constitute direct interference not only with the duties of lawyers to do their jobs, but those sections are clearly a direct interference with right to access to justice and judicial discretion. These sections are in my humble but firm view unconstitutional.
The impsitions of a whopping sums of N10m on litigants and counsel who reasonably believed in the causes they pursued cannot be in the best interest of justice. To impose a minimum cost of N10m on Counsel who files an action found to be internal affair of a political party, is clearly intended to infuse timidity in counsel. As one of my learned friends of the inner Bar put it: ” This is extremely punitive and I am wondering where NBA was in all of these. To make it worse, the Act did not define what constitutes an internal affair of a party. For an example, do we regard an action of the party taken internally but affects the constitutional or statutory right of a member or members as internal affair of the party? Does a lawyer now have to first assume a quasi judicial role in taking instructions of his client to first determine if the case is internal affair of the party? Now, the law specifically provides that the cost will be paid by Counsel who filed the case, what of if after filing, he falls out with the Client for whatever reason and another Counsel pursues the action to its conclusion, it means he still has to pay the punitive cost. Another question is whether the cost covers the case to the appellate level or the Counsel shall be paying the N10m at every tier of litigation. Finally, as an advice to such Counsel taking instruction for this kind of case to take in deposit, an amount that will cover costs to the final court. Like the sum of N100m as deposit for costs (since N10m is minimum cost) aside the fees. In my opinion, this is not only intimidating to lawyers, it is a breach of right to fair hearing of the parties whose rights are affected since any wise lawyer will first insist he makes a deposit to cover costs in case the court finds his action to be “internal affair of a political party”.
Aside from this section 138(1) of the Act has removed ground of qualification from the grounds of presentation of election petitions and then in section 138(3) of the Act any petition presented outside of the two grounds in subsection 1 of section 138 now attracts fine of not less than N5m and N10m against the lawyers and the petitioners. So if a lawyer is briefed that candidate A was not qualified and pursuant to the provisions of the constitution that set out grounds of qualifications to contest election, and upon that instruction he files a petition, is the lawyer and petitioner going to be penalised for bringing petition outside the two grounds in section 138(1) of the Act?. NBA needs to do something about this Act.
