Are Nigerian Lawyers Still Members Of A Noble Profession?

By Agbada S. Agbada

The legal profession is often touted by lawyers as the only noble profession. We pride ourselves as a refined breed of professionals who are not only educated but ‘learned’. As a matter of fact, we claim exclusivity to learnedness. This self-adulation imbues in us a sense of importance and sometimes inspires both awe and envy from other professionals.

Aspirants to the profession are also sometimes attracted to the profession by the appearance of nobility and the fundamental role of lawyers in society. But are Nigerian lawyers still members of a noble profession? The answer to this question will depend largely on the conduct of Nigerian lawyers in society and whether such conduct is deserving of being considered noble.

Honour comes with responsibility and as the common aphorism goes, to whom much is given, much is expected. Nobility is not a mere appellation or cream to oil one’s ego. It entails corresponding responsibilities and standards of behaviour. To be considered members of a noble profession, lawyers must themselves exude traits of nobility. Lawyers must be alive to their responsibilities in society. In the words of Christopher Sapara Williams of blessed memory “A Lawyer lives for the direction of his people and the advancement of the cause of his country.” Such is the responsibility on lawyers.

We are expected to be the lodestar of moral standards and due process. At critical junctures in our national life, lawyers ought to provide direction through dispassionate views and courageous, exemplary stands. When the fabric of society comes under the crushing weight of impunity, lawyers are expected to act as sentinels. In the battle between the powerful and the weak and defenceless, lawyers are expected to provide strength for the weak. Lawyers ought to inveigh against the vices of corruption, oppression, abuse of the rule and like vices perpetrated by those in power and exalted positions with consistency. We are indeed, supposed to be a profession that advances and defends social ideals. We are unconsciously elevated to a leadership position by society and we ought to show leadership. But we have been failing.

In other climes, lawyers have courageously taken on the behemoth of dictatorship with astonishing results. In Pakistan for example, the unconstitutional suspension of the country’s Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry by President Pervez Musharraf in March 2007 resulted in months of protests by Pakistani lawyers who rose in stout defence of the Chief Justice. They sustained the protests for months until Musharraf caved and reinstated the Chief Justice. They rightly interpreted the unconstitutional suspension as an assault on the independence of the judiciary and fought this encroachment forthrightly. To them, their loyalty to the judiciary trumped any other primordial consideration.

Over here, lawyers enabled President Buhari to unconstitutionally suspend and consequently remove Justice Walter Onnoghen as the Chief Justice of Nigeria in 2019 via an ex parte order procured from the Code of Conduct Tribunal. A lot of lawyers did not see the grievous effect of such brazen show of power on the independence of the Judiciary and the administration of justice. Some eminent Senior Advocates of Nigeria were so overwhelmed by the rot in the judiciary that as noble men and women, they could not even comment on the illegality of the removal in their intervention. Such unconstitutional acts of the Executive could not bother them. They were so patronizing in their reaction that their implicit support for the removal could barely be veiled by their expression of neutrality. Again, when Mr. Paul Usoro SAN called for a boycott of the courts in protest, some senior lawyers and some branches of the NBA openly defied him. The reaction of lawyers was generally feeble and polarized. In the end, the Executive got away with this incursion without any repercussion.  This is just one instance when our reaction to a national issue of fundamental importance and serious ramifications fell far short of our exalted position. But it would neither be the first nor the last.

In recent times, we have seen several developments that cast lawyers in ignoble light. From the open defence of Governor Wike’s brazen disregard for due process in his demolition of landed property in the guise of enforcing COVID-19 restrictions, the protests by Muslim lawyers against the cancellation of Governor El-rufai’s invitation as a panelist at the 2020 Annual General Conference of the NBA, the subversion of due process by the Attorney-General of the Federation in his purported amendment of the Rules of Professional Conduct and the reaction of some senior lawyers in their veiled attempts to defend the lawlessness, to the desperation of some lawyers to ensure the execution of a young man convicted of blasphemy in Kano have all exposed lawyers to ridicule. Some lawyers were so miffed by the cancellation of El-rufai’s invitation that they have threatened to pull down the NBA. This set of lawyers have conveniently converted a decision that was predicated solely on El-rufai’s unrelenting assault on the rule of law and his management of the security situation in Southern Kaduna into an ethno-religious affair. Rule of law and good governance which formed the basis of the decision to cancel the invitation are of less importance than the desire to be seen as good kinsmen. They have become ethnic and religious warriors and now want a New NBA to assure them of a platform to express an unfettered observance of religious doctrines and ethnic solidarity. But I thought lawyers are ministers in the temple of justice and not ethnic and religious warriors. I guess they now have a higher calling.

But the problem was not just about the ethnic and religious warriors who came out with their swords and daggers in defence of a kinsman accused of undermining the rule of law. It was also about those lawyers who went purely ad hominem in their reactions to those who protested the cancellation of the invitation. There was little room for logical, civil and professional conversation on the issue. It was rather common to see words as Boko Haram, Bandit, Aboki and such other derogatory terms being used by lawyers to describe their professional colleagues.  What image are we really portraying to those outside the profession? Can we not disagree and even argue with some decorum? Where is the nobility of the legal profession?

Again, not only lawyers from one section of the country are under the shackles of ethnicity and religion. Those who defended Wike’s impunity were also predominantly from Wike’s end of the country. This set of lawyers go about with the “na our own” mentality in their reactions to issues. They are so yoked by ethnicity and religion that their responsibility to give direction to society on critical issues has become secondary. It is now common to see nonlawyers making more logical arguments on legal issues than some lawyers because we now have lawyers who abandon their knowledge of the law on public issues in a bid to be their brother’s keepers.

We have been conducting ourselves in a manner that questions our nobility and learnedness. The legal profession without lawyers is a mere abstraction and it is the quality of minds comprising the legal profession that will determine the respect that is befitting of the profession. We cannot pride ourselves as members of a noble profession without embodying and exuding an aura of nobility. At the moment, the rhetoric of nobility is completely negatived by the sometimes aberrant nature of our conducts. If we truly are still members of a noble profession, our nobility should be seen, not just mouthed.

Written By By Agbada S. Agbada