Who We Ought to Be As Lawyers

Lawyers in Nigeria, particularly senior lawyers, are presently viewed as enemies of the common man. The perception of the ordinary man is that lawyers have teamed up with Politically Exposed Persons to fleece the state and by extension Nigerians .The drum is beating louder and I hope we do not get to a stage where lawyers will be mobbed on our streets. The above feeling was recently echoed by Professor Sagay in an interview granted to Punch Newspaper on the 7th of February 2016, where he said:

"The most blameworthy are senior lawyers — a number of senior advocates who have made it a speciality; who have developed particular skills to kill corruption cases so that their clients, after many years of delays and frustrations of prosecution, end up going away with their loot. And such lawyers, of course, share in the proceeds of crime. They get a part of the loot and that is why you see them buying private jets and so on. That amount of money from the proceeds of crime has completely blunted their consciences and they are as active as the accused persons — the looters — in trying to protect the loot because part of the loot now belongs to them by association."

In the book, Professional Conduct of Legal Practitioners in Nigeria, under the topic “The Role of the Legal Practitioner in Society”, the learned author Late Professor J.O. Orojo, referred to the following statements made on the roles of lawyers in developing Nations. (See pages 21 – 25)

At the opening of the Accra Conference on Legal Education at the Ghana Law School on January 4, 1962, Kwame Nkrumah was reported to have said:

“In a developing country, the first priority is not for lawyers trained to conduct litigation between wealthy individuals…. The lawyers needed in a developing state are, in the first place, those trained to assist the ordinary men and women in their everyday legal problems and particularly in the new problems likely to arise through industrialisation…Secondly, and perhaps most important of all, we need lawyers in the service of the state, to deal with treaties and commercial agreements and with questions of private and public international law….”

Also, President Kenneth Kaunda, in an address to the Law Society of Zambia on 24th of April 1970 said that:

“The lawyer in a developing society must be something more than a practising professional man; he must be more even than a champion of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual. He must be, in the fullest sense, a part of the society in which he lives and he must understand that society if he is to be able to participate in its development and the advancement of the economic and social well-being of its members. The lawyer must go out beyond the narrow limits of the law, because… while the law is the instrument through which society is preserved, in its shape and character, it is the reflection of the society.”

Professor L.C.B. Gower, a jurist and wellknown legal educator, warned that the public responsibilities of the legal practitioner in a developing country are even greater than in the highly developed industrial states. About the needs of developing countries, he said with characteristic forthrightness, inter alia:

“They need commercial, corporate, and property lawyers if they are to achieve an economic take-off. They need bilingual, international, comparative and constitutional lawyers if they are to survive as states and to enter into large unions which the Pan-African sentiment and economic development demand…. They need courageous lawyers with the highest ethical standards if the atrophy of the rule of law and of personal and academic freedom and the corrosive growth of corruption, nepotism and elitism are to be arrested, and if military and police power is to be kept within bounds. Most of all, perhaps, they need constitutional lawyers sophisticated in other disciplines if they are to find a viable substitute for the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy.”

Professor Orojo, equally noted the remarks by Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, Chief Justice of Nigeria (Rtd) (of blessed memory), who emphasised the role of Nigerian legal practitioners as that of legal advisers to the government, commerce, industry and private citizens, as champions of reform and as defenders of human rights and concluded significantly that “the respect in which the Bar in any country is held is the best indication of freedom in that country.” The learned author finally stated thus:

“The Nigerian legal practitioner (as in other developing countries) bears a much heavier responsibility to his society than his counterpart in a highly developed country. In the first place, the Nigerian legal practitioner has to face not only the problems of the developing society but also many of those of the developed one into which Nigeria is moving at a hectic rate; the present rate of change in every facet of life could not have been foreseen. Secondly, he is one among the very few privileged people in an environment where the vast majority are not only illiterate but also ignorant, superstitious and poor; his social and traditional environment clogs him and he is required to make a great effort not only to break through but to play his proper role of social catalyst. In the circumstances, Nigerian legal practitioners must be able not only to perform their traditional functions of catering for the professional needs of the citizens, of administering justice and manning the various legal institutions of the state, but they must also be involved in social change; they must be committed to law reform to ensure the harmonisation of law with the culture of the people and they must strive to ensure a strict adherence to the rule of law and among other things, ensure that the newly acquired political power is carefully watched and controlled so that it is not used to protect or perpetuate the status quo or class domination. As the watchdog of the people, they must, through their independence and total commitment to social justice, provide the necessary support to sustain equally independent and fearless judiciary, the last hope of man for law and order, peace and progress.”

Have we lost it as lawyers? Can we truly say the Bar is held in high esteem by the average Nigerian? Can we salvage the situation? Is there a need to salvage the situation, if we and our families live comfortably?

In the past Lawyers were viewed as emancipators of the common-man because of the activities of lawyers such as Gani Fawehinmi, a Human Rights Activist par excellence and a genuine Crusader for Justice and Alao Aka-Bashorun, whose 2-year presidency of the NBA earned the Bar a place of pride in the struggle of the Nigerian people for the restoration of democracy. The court which used to be viewed as the last hope of the common man is now mockingly viewed as the “lost hope of the common man”. The NBA must rise up from its slumber and assume its rightful place as the voice of the voiceless and the hope of the common man.

We must find our identity and remain determined to have an expression of who we are as lawyers – which is naturally and principally to serve the common good without allowing Economic, Social, Political, Ethnic, Religious or any prejudice whatsoever, to dictate the performance of our professional duties for the good people of Nigeria. These are the obvious challenges staring at us, but we must resolve to be who we ought to be.