“It Is High Time We Paid Attention To The Welfare Of Lawyers In Ministries Of Justice In Nigeria”– Maximus Ugwuoke

*Says Plight Of Lawyers In Ministry Of Justice Is A Welfare Concern And My Office Will Initiate That

Ikechukwu Maximus Ugwuoke, the leading candidate for National Welfare Secretary of NBA has advocated for improvements in working conditions of Lawyers in ministry of Justice saying they deserve better welfare package.

He made the revelation during the advocacy visit of proCAT case manager of Avocats Sans Frontieres (ASF) France (a.k.a Lawyers without Borders) Edugie Amihere to Enugu.

Ugwuoke who is the Enugu State SAFE Support Lawyer for ASF France has maintained that unlike Lawyers in private practice, the lawyers in ministry of Justice only depend on their meagre monthly salaries as their living wages.

According to Ugwuoke, “Some of the lawyers in the ministry have wives and children to cater for, they have rents and bills to pay, they transport themselves to work all from the mean salary they receive.

“In the course of handing human right cases on the platform of the SAFE project in Enugu State, the office of Attorney General is sued as Respondents in many of the cases.

“My experience with the Lawyers who come from the ministry of Justice to defend the cases in court has not been a happy one and this necessitated my inquiries into this.

“I discovered that some of the lawyers in the ministry of Justice had their salaries slashed to about N50,000, there is no provision made for them for logistics for transport and mobilizing witnesses in matters they are prosecuting in court where some witness would request from N10,000 to N15,000 to facilitate their coming to give testimony in court.

“The office of the DPP which anchors thousands of case files in the ministry is underfunded to extent that a former DPP revealed to me that only the sum of about N30,000 is given to the office as a monthly allowance for running the office.

“The question is what really can such a ridiculous amount of N30000 do for such a big and important office ?

How many rims of papers can this buy bearing in mind the large volume of cases and court processes that the lawyers in the ministry are expected to use papers to prepare and file in courts.

“All this account for the inefficient services of the ministry and the ripple effect is seen the swelling number of awaiting trial inmates in our correctional facilities.

“The situation may not be different in many of the ministries of Justice across the country.

“If we take justice delivery serious in this country it is high time we have adequate attention to the welfare of Lawyers in the ministry of Justice across the country to boost their working morale.

“As a candidate for National Welfare Secretary of NBA the plight of Lawyers in the ministry of Justice is a welfare concern that my office would initiated the following steps under the “Maximus for Maximum Welfare” mantra to address.

“First is engaging the stakeholders of the government at state and Federal levels to be making adequate budgetary allocations to the ministry of Justice particularly the office of DPP to improve the working conditions of the lawyers in the ministry.

“Secondly I will source for and engage Donor agencies and NGOs within and outside Nigeria to assist in filling the gap to complement the government’s efforts.”