There’s favouritism in appointment of SANS
By PETER ANOSIKE
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Barrister Gabriel Ezeogbuefi says that there is no credibility in the appointment of senior advocates in the country. According to him, mediocrity rather than meritocracy is what is used in the selection of lawyers to be given the pretigious award.

He said that as the award is sometimes based on the number of appearances one made in the courts, children of eminent lawyers have unmerited advantage since their fathers, who have many clients, prepare cases and ask them to appear so that they can easily make the required appearance and become senior advocates.

Moreover, some people who deserve to be given the award do not get it simply because they don’t have godfathers in the National Judicial Council to influence their award.
In this interview, Ezeogbuefi spoke on the importance of pupilage to fresh law graduates, the challenges of managing a law firm, specialisation and appointment of judges, among other issues.

Pupilage
I strongly believe that pupilage is important to fresh law graduates. In the school, what we were taught were theories but pupilage fulfills the other part. Without pupilage, a fresh graduate is like an artisan who did not apprentice. In pupilage, you are taught how to file cases. You have opportunity of going to court to represent your master.

You also have opportunity of handling some cases. But if you graduate and go immediately to practice, without first of all acquiring these necessary experiences, it simply means that you will be learning on the job, which I think, will take you a longer time. Some people said that only poor law graduates go for pupilage. I don’t agree with them. Even if one has all the money in the world, I still believe that pupilage is important to any fresh graduate.

Managing a law firm
Managing a law firm is not a piece of cake. I can say that even N1 million will not be enough to set up a standard law firm when you think of law books, which are quite expensive. Then you can think of an office, furnishing it with computers and other things. Unless you are from a rich family, you cannot afford to have a standard law office. It is because of this, you see lawyers who have practised for decades but cannot afford a chamber.

On my own part, I can say that it is through the grace of God, coupled with hard work that I am able to get a chamber of my own within a short time of being in the practice.
If you have a chamber, you know that you have salaries to pay at the end of the month. You have human and material resources to manage. You also have rent to pay, that is, if your office is rented.

Specialisation
In advanced countries, especially England, they practise specialization. For instance, you are either a solicitor or an advocate, but the system we meet in Nigeria is that you can do both. Talking about the quality of lawyers we have in Nigeria, I don’t think that is affecting us much because Nigerian lawyers are ranked among the best in the world. But my thinking is that specialisation would have made lawyers more efficient. The issue is the system that we met. But I don’t think it is affecting the quality of lawyers in the country.

Award of SAN
I want to say that in this era of due process, the award of SAN is not following due process. There are lawyers who are supposed to have received the award but they are not getting it. There is a lot of favouritism in the award. If you don’t have godfathers who will influence your case in the Council, you are not likely to get it.

Some of the criteria that are used in the conferment of the award are the number of appearances in various courts. But you can see children of eminent jurists who have got many clients sending their children to make appearances so that they would qualify for the award. I see the award as more of mediocrity than meritocracy. I want a situation where only the best in the profession would be given the award.

Appointment of judges
The way judges are appointed gives room for abuse of the judicial process. I want the appointment of judges to be removed from state governors. You can see what happened in Anambra and Oyo states in the recent past, where judges threw due process overboard and began to dance to the tune of the governors that appointed them into office. If we want the judiciary to be truly independent, the appointment of judges should be taken away from the governors.