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Dr. Suleiman Ikpechukwu Oji is a senior lecturer, Faculty of Law, Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto. The don, who has been lecturing in the university since 1994, says he can not find any law chamber in the real sense of it in Nigeria.

Suleiman, who holds PhD in Public Law from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, blamed the nation’s senior lawyers for this development, saying they did nothing to encourage young lawyers. According to the him, owners of law chambers are in the habit of paying poor salaries to young lawyers working with them and after spending one or two years with them, the young lawyer would be frustrated, go and rent a room and parlor somewhere and call it a chamber since he lacked the required capital to open a befitting law firm.

In this interview, Oji spoke on legal education, challenges of managing a law firm, indiscipline at the bar among other issues.

Why teaching
I have a passion for teaching law. It is like a life ambition and that is why I enjoy doing the job. I don’t see any thing better than impacting knowledge unto others.

Standard of legal education
I don’t believe the standard of legal education has fallen. Unlike in the past when we had small number of people pursuing legal education, the position today is different, many people now wants to study law, so there is a kind of pressure on the facilities that we have in place. Because when you have that kind of large number of people without commensurate development in facilities, there must be one problem or the other, but on the whole, I don’t think the standard has so fallen in such a despicable level.

Having said this, I think it will not be a bad idea to have first degree as a prerequisite qualification for studying law. One thing I have realized as a teacher is that most of the students that started reading law from 100 level seems to have deficiency in English. It is better we have matured students reading law, they are likely to cope with the demands of law because in law, unlike other disciplines where once you know the theory governing a particular topic, you can explain and analyse it based on your own language, that is not the same with law.

In law, you are not tackling only theories you are tackling theories, principles, you are trying to interpret case law, so with the caliber of students coming from secondary schools, they are not well suited to study law. So having first degree as the basic qualification for studying law would go along way towards enhancing the standard of legal education.

Managing a law firm
What we have in Nigeria are not law firms in the real sense of it. The only place you can see something that has resemblance of a law firm in Nigeria is when you go to SAN offices. What you find all over the places in the name of law firm could best be described as room and parlor offices. Managing a law firm is not an easy task because it requires a lot of capital. A law firm should have a richly equipped library, a large conference room, a qualified secretary and an assistant secretary, messengers and a good number of lawyers working there.

But because of the economic situation and the fact that senior lawyers are not helping matters by paying the junior ones peanuts, after staying for a year or so, you find young lawyers trying to open their own chambers and because they lack that capital to put up a standard law firm, you find mushroom chambers all over the place.

You know in law we deal with books and that is why you find people saying a lawyer without books is like a mechanic without tools. The books we are talking about are not just a few law reports on the shelves, it goes beyond that, one should have the up date in history, law journals, drafting, precedence, documents and other areas of knowledge and also a good librarian that should maintain these books.
Look at the situation in Sokoto for instance, if you visit any of our law chambers, what you will find is room and parlor offices with one or two books on the shelves.

Legal practice in Sokoto
Sokoto is not a commercial town. That affects legal practice here. Where you don’t have serious commercial activities going on, you don’t expect to have serious litigation. So, the practice here is dull. The litigants are poor here. In a place like Lagos or Kano, where you have serious commercial activities going on, you will find contracts being awarded and as a result, there would be breach of these contracts and people dragging themselves to court. But in Sokoto, it is a different ball game, I have three cases that I have filed on appeal to go to Court of Appeal, Kaduna, in spite of the fact that I did not charge them much, yet they could not afford it, some of them came to beg me that I should go to Kaduna and do the case, after which they would pay me. And the type of cases we have here are land cases in rural areas involving peasant farmers and issues that borders on marriages.

Lawyers as liars
As a legal practitioner, nobody wants to lose a case and I think some, because of that, do certain things that are unethical in order to win a case even if that will mean changing the facts of the case and tutoring witnesses to come to court to tell lies.

Having said this, let me quickly add that it is grossly unethical for lawyers to lie under whatever circumstances and I don’t think there is any teacher in any faculty of law that will teach law students to tell lies. You know if a lawyer is found committing such offence, that lawyer may be disrobed. It is not part of lawyers training to tell lies. I think rather than saying lawyers are liars, we should regard lawyers as people with logical minds.

Indiscipline at Bar
Yes, it is not uncommon to see some lawyers cheating their clients, they collect money from them and embezzle it. This, I must say is adversely affecting the legal profession but you see, the people themselves are not helping matters by not reporting such lawyers.

People should know that what they should do after being short changed by their attorney is to report the matter to the Nigerian Bar Association(NBA), rather than going into about lamenting.
The association, I can assure you is prepared to take drastic action against such lawyers, if a case of that nature is proved against any lawyer.

Solicitor and barrister
There is this saying in Britain that half of the country is suing the other half, this is because there is that awareness of peoples rights and they are not willing to allow their rights to be toiled with. If solicitor and advocacy can be separated, definitely, it will bring about specialization which will be beneficial to the legal profession because division of labour leads to efficiency. Somebody who knows that he is good in drafting will remain in the chamber and just do the work of drafting or open a chamber for the purpose of advising people, preparing documents for them, advising corporate bodies without going to court. As the situation is in the country where many lawyers are chasing few cases, such specialization can not be possible.

For instance, in America or Britain, you can find about 500 to 1000 people in a chamber and you may not be able to identify the owner of that chamber. It is only when we have that kind of multiple people in a chamber that we can be talking about specialization. But in Nigeria you find the owner of a chamber paying his lawyer N3,000 or N3,500 a month and before you know it, that lawyer will go and rent a room and parlor and call it a chamber, with that kind of situation, how can you have specialization in legal profession? And worse-still, Nigerians don’t know how to make use of legal practitioners, they only come to lawyers when things have gone wrong, they don’t do what we call pre emptive law i.e seeking advice so that they can be advised on the side of law.

The rule of law
Ask any Briton how they (British people) developed, he will tell you they developed because of the respect they have for the rule of law. No nation can make any meaningful progress when there is no rule of law. Where you don’t have rule of law, you will get in the alternative, rule of man. The exponents of constitutional theory have recognized it as a fundamental requirement in the affairs of people. I am happy things are taking shape gradually in the country as far as adherence to the rule of law is concerned. With what is going on in our courts today, I am sure, people would want to be more careful with the way they conduct themselves during future elections.

Supreme Court/Anambra governorship election
You see, one thing is clear; the Supreme Court can over rule itself if the court believed it has erred on the side of law, where the court discovered that the judgment it entered was entered per-in-curium, but in this case, I don’t think judgment was entered per-in-curium and even if it was so, the way it should be done is that judges, having known this, should rather wait until same case having same fact like the earlier one comes before them, then, they can now over rule themselves, I think that is the proper thing to do. The way it is now, no matter how honest they want to look at the case again and give proper interpretation to it, people are bound to misinterpret it.

It is going to reduce the reputation that the judiciary is building for itself. That case ought not to have been accepted in the first place.