After an energy-sapping campaign, Afam Osigwe, SAN, eventually emerged the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). Although he was quick to list 12 issues that his administration will focus on, Osigwe appeared to have forgotten that he inherited a deeply polarised bar. While his predecessor, Yakubu Maikyau, also inherited a fractured one, he was unable to unite members of the association. Osigwe’s immediate challenge is to unite members of the association, and any other thing will follow.

We must commend the NBA for conducting credible elections. Before the adoption of digital voting, electing the association’s executives was often stage-managed by some cabals. Bent on taking back the association from those who think it belonged to them alone, more lawyers are now taking part in the process. Today, popular participation has helped the NBA that used to go cap in hand to beg state governors for funds to organise its annual general conferences. Now that NBA depends more on revenue from members to run its activities, a measure of integrity has been restored to the association.

However, for both the bar and the bench to rise above the interests that are holding back fair and equitable justice administration in Nigeria, the onus is more on senior lawyers who must dispense with their toga of superiority complex within the NBA. They must understand how unique their role is both to the profession and the larger society. “Our system of justice is a public resource, it does not belong to the legal profession, it does not belong to the bar or to the bench. It belongs to the people,” former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo once reminded the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN) at one of their sessions. “We are paid operators of a service that our constitution created to resolve their disputes and give justice.”

This leads us to another omission in Osigwe’s list of priorities–the lack of transparency in the affairs of the NBA. To rekindle members’ interest in the association, the new executive must be open and transparent in words and deeds. Besides, indiscipline among lawyers has reached an intolerable level. The impunity with which members of the profession engage in illegal and fraudulent activities has called to question the ability of the Legal Disciplinary Committee of the NBA to sanitise the profession. This is another issue that Osigwe’s exco must look into.

Osigwe is assuming office at the same time with a new Chief Justice of Nigeria in Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun. We hope both will fight the corruption that has been linked to the bar and bench in Nigeria. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu has been critical of both in recent years. “In a number of electoral cases in Nigeria today, the settled law is now unsettled and the time-honoured principle of stare decisis does not seem to matter any longer,” Yakubu once lamented. “The more INEC strives to improve the credibility and transparency of our electoral process; the more extraneous obstacles are put in our way through litigations.”

To return the legal profession to that enviable position it used to be, the association must do more. In the past when NBA talks, government listens. This is no longer so. Can the NBA regain its voice under Osigwe? To do this, the association will have to stop meddling in politics and focus on strengthening the welfare of its members. While we congratulate the new NBA leadership, we hope that under Osigwe, the association will continue to act as the bulwark of social justice and defender of the rule of law and democracy in Nigeria. (THISDAY Editorial)

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