The spokesman for the 68 newly conferred Senior Advocates of Nigeria, Ibrahim Gamdeh Adamu, SAN, has told the Supreme Court that a criticism of the legal profession made by a guest at the Nigerian Bar Association’s last Annual General Conference contained “some truth” which calls for introspection.
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The passage came in the course of an argument that the profession is producing too many lawyers.
“I am of the humble view that the legal profession is mass producing legal practitioners, which has the concomitant effect of lowering the standard of legal practice and affecting the [nobility] of the legal profession itself.”
“In 1981, when I was called to the bar, only 501 of us were enrolled as legal practitioners.“
“When this is compared with the over 13,000 legal practitioners who have so far been enrolled already in the current year, 2026, between February and July, and in less than six months, it will be quite alarming, especially in a dwindling economy such as ours.”
“The explosion can hardly be justified even when compared with the population growth, and has impacted negatively in the lowering standard of legal practice and the [nobility] of the legal profession itself.”
“It is very common these days to find qualified legal practitioners engaging in many, many jobs at odd places. This ought not to be.“
It was at that point that he turned to the Port Harcourt conference.
@thenigerialawyer“His Remarks Hurt Me, But There Is Some Truth In What He Said” — Adamu, SAN, Says VeryDarkMan, Who ‘Barely Had A Secondary School Certificate,’ Was Given NBA Conference Platform♬ original sound – TheNigeriaLawyer
“At the just concluded NBA 66th Annual General Conference at Port Harcourt, a person who barely had a secondary school certificate was given a platform to address the largest gathering of lawyers in Africa.”
He said the guest was later reported to have responded to those who criticised his invitation by calling them a “bunch of clowns”, and to have asked whether law is a noble profession before answering his own question.
The words Mr. Adamu attributed to him, and repeated before the full Court, were these:
“Well, lately law has not been a noble profession. I’m sorry to say, I’m not even sorry to say, that it is one of the poorest professions in this country.”
He said the guest then asked, sarcastically:
“How many lawyers actually go to court?“
And concluded:
“Every year, they say that they have people graduating from the law school, only to end up selling their [certificates].“
Mr. Adamu did not rebut the remarks. He conceded them in part.
“These remarks hurt me as a member of the legal profession, but there is some truth in what he has said, which calls for introspection. We should therefore all look inwards.“
He placed responsibility with the regulator of legal education.
“It is my humble view that the Council of Legal Education should take an urgent step to checkmate the explosion of the number of legal practitioners we produce.“
“Recently, I was shocked to read that even the National Open University of Nigeria has a backlog of over 5,000 law graduates currently waiting for admission into the Nigerian Law School. I didn’t even know that they had a law faculty.“
He proposed four measures:
“I strongly recommend that there should be stricter control on the accreditation of law faculties in the universities, and the enforcement of discipline in their admission of law students.”
“I further suggest that it is time to consider the study of law as a second degree.”
“And also prescribe the passing of an examination as a prerequisite for admission into the Nigerian Law School, in addition to having a law degree.”
“Furthermore, I suggest that there should be at least two years mandatory internship for newly admitted legal practitioners before they are licensed to set up law firms, in order to standardise and upgrade law practice.”
The charge that law is among the poorest professions in the country was not left to a conference guest alone. Addressing the same session minutes earlier, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mrs. Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, told the Court that young lawyers “hear us speak of dignity, then some return to chambers where their pay cannot meet the basic costs of going to work every day,” and said that paying a colleague a salary on which he cannot meet the basic cost of working and living “must cease to be an accepted model of practice, because it is tantamount to modern day slavery.”
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