Chairman of the occasion, Justice Adesuyi Olateru-Olagbegi (Judge Emeritus) urged Nigerian Lawyers to buy into the process as mediation was here to stay. He said that aside the Lagos State Government which has taken a number of steps to promote the process, even the Supreme Court and other jurisdictions have reached some levels of introducing alternative dispute resolution in the hope that matters will be resolved at that level. He recalled for instance that in his years as a presiding Judge, he had often wondered why certain cases like those of landlord and tenant were so bitterly contested in court. Guest of Honour and Secretary to the Lagos State Government Barrister Tunji Bello in an address read on his behalf noted that the induction of the Associate Mediation Advocates which was the first of its kind, was an added boost to the importance which the Lagos State Government attaches to mediation as an Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism Barrister Valentino Buoro, head of SCMA operations in Nigeria had in his welcome address emphasized the imperative of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) processes. He noted that ADR is a work in progress and that several jurisdictions around the world were in different stages in the effort to make mediation, the flagship of the process, attain its pride of place in civil and commercial dispute resolution. According to him, the European Union a few weeks ago announced public consultation on the application of its “Mediation directive”‎ which has the objective to facilitate access to ADR and to promote the amicable settlement of disputes, by encouraging the use of mediation and by encouraging a balanced relationship between mediation and judicial proceedings. He stated that the European Union published objectives seeks to ‎ensure the ’’ quality of mediation through codes of conduct, training of mediators and other quality standards, facilitate the recourse to mediation, ensure the enforceability of agreements resulting from mediation, preserve the confidentiality of information concerning a mediation process, ensure that limitation or prescription periods do not expire during the mediation process, and ensure the availability to the general public of information on how to contact mediators’’. He seized the opportunity of the event to call on the federal Government ‎of Nigeria to institutionalize alternative dispute resolution as an integral part of the nation’s justice system by establishing Multi-Door Courthouses in all courts of the Federation. Mediation Advocacy which is the art of representing clients at mediation is the latest of the developments in the field of emerging ADR professions. At the outset of Mediation practice, it was thought that persons who engaged the process could do so without legal or other professional representation. It thus became the burden of the Mediator to educate the parties on how to develop a mediation mindset and what negotiation in the process was all about. This was a distraction to the mediator and an inadequate and sometime futile effort to achieve a meaningful outcome of the process. Today however the job of preparing the client through a sustained process of a paradigm shift is that of the Mediation Advocate. The Mediation Advocate, be he a lawyer or some other professional should have at Chambers thoroughly examine the strengths and weakness of client’s case and how to present same in such manner that both parties will derive some benefit from the process. The outcome of any mediation therefore should largely have been achieved at the preparation stages before appearing before the mediator‎. Barrister Buoro noted that without any fear of contradiction, he was of the opinion that the success or otherwise of any effort at promoting or propagating the ideals of the mediation process in any given society lies on the number of Mediation Advocates that society produces. He said that this was because Mediation Advocates as lawyers or other non-legal professional advisers were the first line of contact between disputants and the justice system. ‘’They hold all the aces as to which direction the pendulum of dispute resolution should swing as between litigation or ADR’’, he declared Twenty five of the inductees are lawyers while six others including a Roman Catholic Priest, Rev Fr Charles Soyombo, are non-lawyers. Lawyers in the profession are designated Mediation Advocates while non-lawyers are designated Mediation Advisors in line with international standards.]]>