This year’s election in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) held on July 14 and 15 in Abuja has come and gone; producing winners and losers, and leaving lasting impressions in the minds of both legal and non-legal people.
Augustine Oyarekhua Alegeh, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), emerged the 27th President of the highly respected association together with 13 other national officers who will help him steer the ship for the next two years.
But the election has begun to receive as much commendation as knocks. It is a mixed bag of views from mainly legal minds and their uncharitable opinions have the potential to diminish the integrity the men and women of the hood and wig enjoy in a society where everybody is believed to be on the same page due to corruption and its tendencies.
Perhaps, some Nigerians, including myself, would not have bothered about the outcome of the election if not that Femi Falana, another SAN, spoke about the amount of money contestants spent.
Falana raised the alarm on television last week that there is no difference between what the lawyers did during the election and what politicians do, going by the huge sums allegedly spent to win offices in the NBA. Falana is hardly alone.
Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Dr. Chidi Odimkalu, decried the role money played in such a professional contest.
Said he: “Candidates spent freely on the transport, accommodation and subsistence costs of their delegates.
“Arguably, for the first time in the NBA’s history, some candidates deployed private jets as they rushed around the country canvassing for the delegates’ count to get them across the finish line.
“In these elections, money spoke very loudly. By some estimates, the NBA’s 2014 elections were the first in which the campaign expenditure easily crossed the one billion naira mark.”
Zik Obi, Chairman of Otu Okaiwu (association of Igbo lawyers in Lagos) feels money has become the in-thing in NBA elections.
“We heard of stories of people being given money to vote for a particular candidate. Branch chairmen were alleged to have collected huge sums of money.
“Let us now open the system to universal suffrage to allow every lawyer in Nigeria vote and also introduce electronic voting. The time has come to effect a change,” Obi canvassed.
Yet, the views of Kunle Ogunba (SAN) of the Lagos NBA are laced with insinuations of unethical happenings in the NBA even though he gave a pass mark to the election superintended by Okey Amaechi (SAN).
Ogunba said: “Now, I look forward to a more responsive NBA president. We as lawyers are the last bastion and hope of the common man. I want a presidency that would be more vocal on issues affecting the society. I want a president that would defend the rule of law, fight corruption and raise the bar of the Bar.”
Consider also the submission of Jibrin Samuel Okutekpa (SAN) of NBA Makurdi branch.
“There is no doubt that the NBA elections have become difficult to run and conduct. There are many challenges, many of our colleagues openly made demands on contestants. Contestants spent fortunes on the elections.
“Honour, integrity, candour and sincerity, which are hallmarks of the legal profession, seem to have taken flight from the sub-consciousness of almost all our members, the old and the young inclusive,” he said.
Odimkalu, like many others, wonder why leadership elections in any professional or civic association such as the NBA would cost such a fortune.
When I spoke with one of the newly elected officials during the week, his response to Falana’s submission was not only shocking, it fully reflects how banal our society has become and the lip service that has become our lot as far as corruption is concerned.
Though the NBA official conceded that so much was spent by some of the contestants, he was worried that Falana’s anger stems from the fact that his candidate lost in the election, having allegedly spent more than N600 million.
It rankles that these are men and women of our society, some with the over-rated ego of incorruptibility and priding themselves as the last hope of the common man.
Over the years, we have seen and heard of lawyers, including judges, who soiled their hands with sharp practices of monumental proportion. Attorneys romance with the high and mighty in government, ready to do anything to please such government officials, mainly politicians, with little concern about the impact of their attitude on the larger society.
This year’s NBA election was key because it was coming on the heels of the country’s general poll next year, which is less than seven months away.
As the NBA official said, it is not possible for the government not to show interest in who emerges as the president of the NBA as the nation prepares for the general election.
Lawyers, whether they like it or not, are conscious of this fact, which explains why all the candidates for the presidency of the NBA from the South West insisted on contesting, instead of the old practice of presenting a consensus candidate from the zone for an easy win.
That Alegeh won the election with 691 votes was because three candidates from the South West – Dele Adesina, Funke Adekoya and Niyi Akintola – decided to go it alone.
Their votes: Adesina (370), Adekoya (255) and Akintola (126) would have produced a winner from the South West easily, but the wheeling and dealing could not be resisted. For example, it was said that a particular contestant paid for almost half of the entire beds in Sheraton Hotel two weeks to the election.
It will be wrong to assume that what happened in the NBA election is peculiar to the body, though. Many professional bodies have turned into pressure groups for politicians and the government, and that explains why professionalism has been sacrificed on the altar of selfishness. Anything goes.
The NBA election is important because lawyers’ role sometimes involves people’s lives and death. If, therefore lawyers do not understand this fact and decide to crave for material things exemplified by money, power and other good things of life in the course of plying their profession, then we are all doomed.
Nigeria will conduct election in seven months’ time and some aspects of it may be a subject of judicial intervention. The question is: what manner of lawyers will intervene for justice to be done? Will the lawyers look politicians in the eye and dispense justice according to their consciences?
What views will the NBA presidency espouse assuming it allowed politicians to compromise the professional ethics of the body’s election? And more importantly, how prepared are lawyers to respect their age-long profession known for inviolability, integrity, dignity?
As I congratulate the new NBA executives led by Alegeh my charge to them is to recreate the old image of the profession to the admiration of all. One way is to introduce e-voting to make it possible for lawyers to cast their ballot without having to travel outside their base.
