QUESTION: Your opponents may have their reservations, but how would you assess the election that brought you to office? Abubakar Balarabe Mahmoud: The election was unique in many ways. This is the very first time we are introducing, under the NBA constitution, the universal suffrage system in which every lawyer who is up to date in his practicing fees and other dues is eligible to participate as against the previous system where only delegates, the president and national officers participate in the election. In this election, there were over 26, 000 eligible participants though eventually, much less, I think about 6, 000, actually took part in the voting. But compared to the previous situation this is a huge improvement. The voting itself was electronic, which means you could do it from any remote location. Many of our colleagues, who were on vacation outside the country, actually participated. So, it enabled a large number of our members to participate in the process. The election was credible and robust, and the entire process was transparently administered. QT: How would it sound adjudging you an underdog going into the election? Mahmoud: Clearly, my opponent, Mr J.K. Gadzama, had expended a lot more energy and resources. But as the campaign process unfolded, our team, made up of really terrific young lawyers, put up a really effective campaign using all the modern social media platforms. We travelled across the country. We went to all the 36 states and the FCT. We practically went to all the 114 branches of the NBA. Sometimes, you are considered an underdog because you are underrated. And we are happy that to some extent, we were underrated. But that helped us to concentrate on our work and be able to reach as many of our colleagues as possible. And the outcome has shown we had more superior campaign machinery and more superior ideas. And the programmes and initiatives we hope to bring about resonated better with lawyers and the result was that we were elected with a very clear majority. QT: You have enunciated four cardinal programmes for the NBA in the next two years, can you expatiate on them? Mahmoud: Our programmes have been well articulated and put in our manifesto and the various platforms. And they centre on what we call the three R’s and P. ‘Regulation,’ which means enhanced regulation of the legal profession. ‘Representation,’ which means enhanced representation of our members particularly, focusing on issues of young lawyers and young members of the legal profession. ‘Re-engineering,’ which refers to our interest to strengthen the bar association, to make it more effective and efficient; and ‘Public Interest;’ referring to our responsibility to speak courageously on all matters of national interest with particular focus on the judiciary. These are the key areas we are going to focus on in the course of the next two years. QT: Young lawyers constituted a major voting bloc in the election, what are your specific programmes for them? Mahmoud: That is part of our ‘Representative’ role which is to improve and sharpen them. The idea is to encourage professional development of younger members, equip them with new skills and better abilities to access the modern legal market. We are already working on this. As soon as we are inaugurated, we will hit the ground running. Once we get the strategy of addressing issues of professional development and welfare of the young lawyers, we will be addressing those issues speedily. We hope to come up with innovative and specific activities that will yield immediate results. QT: In the course of this election, there have been divisions, factions in parts of the country such as Abuja, Lagos and Benin between the NEC-endorsed executives and the electoral committee executives. How would you resolve these issues? Mahmoud: When you talk about the elections, I think you need to separate the elections at the national from the branches. The elections at the branch levels took place in June. Yes, we are aware that there were fallouts from those elections. The NBA has internal dispute resolution mechanisms and we’ll make sure that those are deployed properly to address some of these fallouts from the conduct of those elections. At the national level, I don’t think there is any division. What has happened is that a few people are not happy with the outcome of the election and they are protesting. Again, there is the internal dispute resolution process so if they are dissatisfied, they can channel their grievances through the internal dispute resolution mechanism and I am sure those grievances would be addressed. On our own part, we carefully evaluated the processes of this election. We monitored it at all stages, and we are completely satisfied with the credibility of the process, and the fact that it was not interfered with in any manner. Other stakeholders monitored the process, and they all came up with the same conclusion. Even our opponents in this election, Mr. Gadzama’s camp, also monitored the process; they were at the Election Situation Room of the NBA at the secretariat. They were part of the technical briefing that took place before the election. We have it on clear record that Gadzama’s agents were completely satisfied with what they saw. So, the alleged disputations are to my view without any merit and I hope that Gadzama’s team will accept the result in good faith and team up with us to move forward. QT: As the anti-corruption fight of the federal government continues, how will the NBA make its contribution? Mahmoud: The anti-corruption struggle is a fight for all Nigerians and the legal profession must be in the forefront of that fight. We will support the administration to strengthen all aspects of the fight against corruption looking at the laws, rules of procedure, but also looking at the entire architecture of the justice system and attitudinal issues among lawyers. The idea is to really carry out far-reaching reforms in the legal profession. No country can survive with a system of justice where corruption becomes so pervasive. So, we will make sure it becomes priority number one in the activities of the bar association. QT: Do you share the view that legal education standard has fallen? Mahmoud: I think so. Generally, yes. But that is not to say there are no brilliant lawyers. There are many bright young men and women. But when you talk about standards in general, I think it is safe to say there is declining standards in legal education. NBA needs to get into that. We hope to work with the universities, the academia and the Nigerian Law School to bring about some improvement in that area as well. QT: Your predecessor, Austin Alegeh (SAN) had the stamp and seal as strategy to improve the revenue of lawyers. Are you going to continue and possibly improve on this policy? Mahmoud: We will certainly retain the stamp and seal programme. What we will do is to look at its implementation to see areas that need to be strengthened or improved on, to make it more useful for lawyers. We spoke about this in most of the places we went to in the course of the campaign. We also want to look at other possibilities of expanding the legal market. We will look at areas where new jobs would be created, where there are encroachments by other professionals, and try to reclaim those areas. So, we will be looking at all of those places and the idea is to strengthen the legal profession, improve the welfare of lawyers and make sure the legal market is only accessed by lawyers. QT: What is your suggestion as a way out of what has been admitted as the country’s economic depression or recession? Mahmoud: Undoubtedly, the economy is going through difficult times and challenges. I think the administration can easily turn this into opportunities as well. Nigeria has operated a mono-economy for so long; relying basically on sale of crude oil to access revenues. This has not been healthy. With the decline in the value of the currency and the price of crude oil, I think the time has come to take some really hard decisions to diversify the economy of the country. And there are many other possibilities apart from agriculture. We have several natural resources and minerals that can be exploited. This is an opportunity the government should take advantage of to grow the economy, and diversify it, and also explore new areas. QT: As you assume office, what would you want to tell the lawyers who voted you in? Mahmoud: We thank all our members for participating in the process so patiently and for educating themselves on the requirements. For many of our members, this is a new process. Accrediting yourself online, updating your records, getting passwords, being faithful and all of that required a lot of efforts and patience. And for many branches where there was no access to the internet, this must have presented some challenges. Overall, we are very satisfied with the involvement of our members. Source: dailytrust.]]>