Apart from police brutality, the law practitioner also listed disobedience to court orders and the Constitution as another major threat to lawyering in Nigeria.
Joe Effiong, Uyo
Other professionals may be looking at lawyers as privileged species, people that command respect, attract favour and are feared by rulers and the ruled alike, but, in every profession, there are hazards. And lawyers are not left out. So, when it comes to professional lamentations, lawyers can also file in their claims, enough to make others go for a thanksgiving.
Such lamentations were contained in a paper, “Lawyering in Nigeria: Contemporary Threats and the Attendant Consequences,” presented by Mr. Ekemini Udim as part of the 2018 Bar Week of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Uyo, Akwa Ibom, branch.
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Udim, who started by saying, “if there are five highly cherished professions in the world, the legal profession is certainly one of the first three,” declared that the present set of lawyers were beneficiaries of the ingenuity of the founding fathers of the profession deeply entrenched in the entire federation of Nigeria.
But while enthusing about the nobility of the legal profession, Udim was quick to point to contemporary threats to lawyering in the country: “The truth is that, the legal profession has become an endangered species in Nigeria and the earlier we rise to the occasion to save our profession, the better for all of us and the better for our children who aspire to join us in the legal profession.”
He named the threats, 10 of them. While some were serious, other looked not too threatening. The police took the number one spot.
“The Nigerian police force has become a serious threat to lawyering in Nigeria today,” he said. “A typical policeman sees the lawyer as an intruder and as a meddlesome interloper. When the lawyer visits the police station to first of all inquire to know why his client is kept in custody and to solicit his bail, the initial reaction of most of policemen is to rebuff the lawyer and query why he has come to solicit for a ‘criminal’. The criminal here is a mere suspect who has not been arraigned in any court of competent jurisdiction for the commission of an offence.
“Some policemen also get angry that the presence of the lawyer in the police station will rob them of the opportunity of getting what they would have got from the suspect. In recent times, we have read stories of lawyers being molested and assaulted at various police stations across the federation. Others have been arrested, locked up and arraigned in court on phony charges for daring to come to the police station to solicit for suspects. The instances are indeed numerous.”
Apart from police brutality, the law practitioner also listed disobedience to court orders and the Constitution as another major threat to lawyering in Nigeria.
“Nothing can be so frustrating for a lawyer who diligently prosecutes a case to end and obtain judgement, only to realise that the judgement of the court is treated with ignominy by certain persons in authority and relevant agencies of government,” he said.
He la,emted that the recurrent disobedience of court orders and disregard of the Constitution as serious threats to lawyering have not only reduced the effort of lawyers to a mere exercise in futility, but has also rendered their victories in court empty and unenforceable.
Other threats to lawyering, according to Udim, include negative perception by anti-graft agencies; increasing rate of poverty in Nigeria, which he said had led to good cases being left unprosecuted for want of resources; computer illiteracy on the part of lawyers and judges; conflicting judgements of courts; incompatible filing procedure; difficulties in getting the stamp and seal; poor attitude of lawyers to health matters; and increasing rate of professional misconduct.
Udim thus advised that the police must change their attitude towards lawyers, adding that the NBA should continue to champion the interest of lawyers by holding regular meetings with the police to make the police see the lawyers as partners.
Udim was not the only speaker in the legal education aspect of the Bar Week. Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, delivered the keynote address on “The Bench, Bar, Investigating Agencies and Anti-corruption Campaign in Nigeria.”
In the lecture, he accused the federal government of hiding under the guise of fighting corruption to weaken institutions established by law while breeding ‘strongmanism’ to avert probe.
According to the human rights activist, the federal government has continued to set its anti-corruption agencies against other arms of government and perceived opponents, treating corrupt officials within the party of government with deodorants, while applying insecticides, pesticides and herbicides on the opposition.
While the security agencies have been pushed by government to overstep their constitutional bounds on perceived or imagined corrupt politicians of the opposition, he said the system had continued to sweep glaring cases of fraud against those serving under it under the carpet.
Said he: “Under the present dispensation, though the government led by President Muhammadu Buhari has sworn to fight corruption to a standstill, impunity and disobedience to extant laws and rules, including the judgement of courts of competent jurisdiction, have become the order of the day.
“The government seems to derive joy in breaching the laws and established rules. There is brazen abuse of the rule of law and glaring impunity all over the country, the judiciary is no more the last hope of the common man, since it is apparent these days that the people at the helm of affairs, who claim to be democratic, prefer the rule of force, which is alien to democracy, rather than observe the rule of law embedded in it.
“The deliberate attempt by the executive to get the judiciary subdued by launching attacks on judicial officers is evident and to a great extent whittled the boldness that existed in the arm. The humiliation of serving judges by the executive arm is one of the methods by the government to create an atmosphere of fear, that will enable it conduct its affairs with grave impunity and utter disregard to the rule of law, but without check by the other arms of government.”
Eno-obong Akpan, the NBA Uyo branch chairman, in her welcome address, said the 2018 Bar Week was a fine blend of events designed to provide an enriching experience.
“The Bar Week is commonly observed as a yearly ritual and, through a line-up of interesting programmes, lawyers are encouraged to put aside the rigors of legal practice, refresh the body and the mind and celebrate the fine essence of a profession we all love,” she said.
With more than 700 members in the branch, the chairman lamented that the venue of the lawyer’s meetings, the Justice Eno Otu Bar Centre, could contain just 100 people, hence the urgent need for the lawyers to complete their secretariat. She appealed for support from government, other organisations and individuals.