Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed
THE
Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, and renowned lawyer,
Afe Babalola (SAN), have advocated reforms in the country’s legal
profession.
While Mohammed called on stakeholders to
rid the legal profession of bad eggs in order to restore its dignity,
Babalola recommended that the appointment of Senior Advocates of Nigeria
should follow the practice in England where the title is awarded to all
that are qualified for the rank yearly.
The SAN said the practice in England was
better than the stipulated regulation in Nigeria that only 15 could be
so honoured yearly out of the backlog of qualified lawyers.
A statement by the Head, Public
Relations, Afe Babalola University, Ado- Ekiti, Tunde Olofintila, quoted
both Mohammed and Babalola as speaking at the 48th edition of the
Annual Conference of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers in
Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, on Monday.
The
CJN attributed the setback in the legal profession to the attitude of
“bad eggs amongst practising lawyers, judges and law teachers.”
Mohammed, who was represented by Justice
Ibrahim Muhammad of the Supreme Court, advised lawyers, judges, law
teachers and all stakeholders in the legal profession to play
significant roles in sanitising the profession.
“I therefore implore this gathering of
law teachers, a collection of great minds who have the onerous
responsibility of moulding the character and minds of students to make
positive contributions to the political development of this country,” he
said.
Babalola said, “But what do we have
here? In the last few years, many lawyers have been asking for the
abrogation of the SAN title. Their grievance is that they apply year
after year and those who are qualified could be as many as 70, but at
the end of the day, the law limits the number of those that should be
appointed to only 15, leaving a backlog of those who are qualified.
“The question then arises: if a person
is qualified, when does he become unqualified again? Perhaps one may ask
those who are charged with the duty of appointing 15 out of 70 what
criteria they use to jettison those who are qualified? This practice of
appointing 15 out of the several that are qualified has led to
‘selection’ which may not be free from extraneous considerations.”
He noted that this practice had
encouraged the “man-know-man” syndrome where those who grant the SAN
title to lawyers tend to favour those they know ahead of those they
don’t know very well.
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