The Sun News On-line

Nigerians are gradually coming out of the cocoon that Nigeria is a country where nothing works. That is why they are praising the judiciary for living up to expectation as the last hope of the masses.

According to Barrister Francis Ogunbowale, the principal counsel of Tenimasunwon Chambers, Lagos, the judiciary in the present dispensation, has given the nation hope.

Choosing Law
You will agree with me that Law as a profession is noble. We were made to know that apart from Medicine in the sciences, Law is another course that was considered to be very noble in the Arts. My father once told me that in the colonial days, people going to a lawyer’s house would hold their caps in their hands, remove their shoes, to show the type of respect lawyers were accorded that time. Law, to me, is a noble profession and I studied it with passion.

I had studied Political Science first before going for Law. And we studied Political Science that time with passion too, but I realized that Law was more professional and is still more professional than Political Science. To be more liberal, when you are a lawyer, you know that you have been trained to go to court. But if you study Political Science, you will still come back to become a PR man or an insurance man or something else. I consider Law to be more professional than Political Science and that is why I veered into it.

Fulfillment
I always like to tell people that it is one thing to study a course that is focused and noble and is another thing for you to study a course that will give you satisfaction. Well, I have got satisfaction as far as this course is concerned. As I normally tell people, if you want to become a rich man, the best thing for you is to go into business and not Law because Law is more than a money-making profession. The society expects you as a lawyer to provide some essential services to people .It may not be in terms of going to court, even though there are times you need to go to court to defend some criminal matters.

Pupillage
I have practised for 12 years and I need to be honest with myself. If you don’t serve pupillage, there is no way you would know the nitty-gritty of this profession. This is not to say that after serving pupillage, you know everything. But then, there are certain basic things you need to know in practice, especially if you want to be a legal practitioner. A legal practitioner needs to undergo pupillage, however short it may be. It would give you more confidence to confront issues and then to conduct yourself very well in court.

Charge and bail lawyers
Well, I don’t know your definition of charge and bail lawyers, but I have heard that concept and I consider it to be those who mainly stay around magistrate’s courts. If those are the people you consider as charge and bail lawyers, I would say that it is derogatory because a lawyer is a lawyer and all fingers are not equal. The profession does encourage lawyers to stay in beer parlours or in obscure places to practise law.

This category of lawyers you are talking about especially in the magistrate’s courts, are those who assist suspects to get bail after they have been charged and arraigned. To me, I consider it as an important aspect of legal practice. But what I frown at is lawyers hanging out in beer parlours around the magistrate’s court.

Lawyers and heaven
I want to tell you that I am a Christian, a member of Catholic church. My prayer is to make heaven. I am doing everything possible to make heaven. I want to tell you in all sincerity that there are a lot of temptations in this profession; temptations for you to do what you don’t want to do. As I said earlier, there are many purposes and everybody has his own purpose of going into a profession. There are people who may wish to go into this profession for the purpose of becoming fraudsters.

And you can see that the Bar council and all the stakeholders of the legal profession are trying as much as possible not to allow criminals into the profession. But I can tell you that gone are the days when lawyers were considered to be liars. I can tell you that there are some lawyers who are today pastors of Bible believing churches, who would not compromise the ideals of making heaven.

SAN title
I don’t know anybody who was conferred with the prestige honour of the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) that has not merited it. For somebody to even become a lawyer, in the first instance, is considered okay. And for you to have practised for 10 years and above, is worthy. There are some things that people don’t consider when they are making generalisation and conclusions about the award of SAN. There is a procedure and it is well laid down. One of them is that you must not be less than 10 years at the Bar; you must have conducted certain cases at the high court and the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, then you must apply.

If you are considered before the public as a great lawyer and you don’t apply in the first instance, they won’t come to you and just give you. You have to apply and meet all those conditions before you can be awarded SAN. There could be one or two cases that might be considered controversial, but I can tell you that I have not seen one person that has been conferred with the title of SAN without meriting it.