On 31st of July, the Nigeria Bar Association elected new executives to steer the ship of the association for another two years. This year’s election saw the emergence of a young lawyer who is not a senior advocate of Nigeria, Olumide Akpata. We congratulate the Nigerian Bar Association and the new executives to be led by Akpata. He defeated Dr. Babatunde Ajibade and Dele Adesina, both SANs in the contest.
Just like majority of Nigerians, we hope the new executives made up of majorly young and energetic lawyers will change the narratives of the bar, especially the welfare of young lawyers.
The legal profession that has enjoyed prestige and has been religiously revered with roll call of national heros today has been debased and relegated with a huge economic gulf separating members of the association. A profession that is expected to be the advocate of the common man in the temple of Justice today, is itself bedeviled by injustice and deficient in needed attention to welfarism of members, especially the young ones.
This challenge has exposed legal practitioners to ridicule and embarrassing situation. There have been various reports of breach of the fundamental human rights of lawyers, there are reports of Police harassment and molesting, unlawful and indiscriminate arrest and incarceration of members.
The noble profession has never been this challenged.
More also the prolonged domineering of the office of the president of the association by senior lawyers especially the SANs contributed to the neglect of the welfare of the young lawyers. More also some senior lawyers almost made the office of the president of the association exclusive for SANs but the election of Akpata broke the jinx.
The senior lawyers are however the ones that has brought disrepute to the association and the profession. There are various cases of SANs bribing judged to influence judgement. The Case of Justice Rickey Tarfa who allegedly bribed a judge and some others do not paint the association in good light.
We therefore charged the new NBA President to see his election as an opportunity to reset the organisation and restore the prestige associated with the legal profession.
He should use the 24 months he has to bridge the gap of financial and remuneration inequality caused by the nonchalant and disregard of the members welfare by previous leaderships. He should also lead the bar to fight corruption in government and also discourage abuse of office. We wish the new leadership success and a better NBA.
