Lagos C J expresses concern over worrisome conduct, practice of lawyers
By Jude-Ken Ojinnaka
The Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Kazeem Alogba has raised concern over the unprofessional conduct of some lawyers before the courts.
Justice Alogba observed that the conducts of lawyers these days are worrisome, adding that the situation becomes more worrisome when given the fact that some of them have children who have also become lawyers and see what they are doing.
“If what we saw that made us decide to be legal practitioners is now vanishing in our eyes, then there is a course for concern”, he said.
Justice Alogba expressed his views while addressing lawyers, judges, and other legal practitioners at a cocktail party held at the Ikeja High Court complex as part of activities marking the commencement of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL) conference.
Justice Alogba agreed with the perception that the legal profession ought to be doing better, stressing the need to bring back the very good old days but with newer innovations.
“We need to bring the shine back to the legal profession. Whether anybody likes it or not, the legal profession is the primus among all professions anywhere in the world. And so with that pride of place, we should earn it, we should maintain it, we should promote it and enrich it so that we would continue to justify the earnings.
“ I want to call on all of us including my brother judges, and judges throughout the whole gamut of the judiciary right from federal to the lowest arm at the local level, we need to sit down and ask ourselves where have we gone wrong”, he suggested.
Recalling the year 2020 nationwide protest against police brutality, Justice Alogba said:
“When the incident of the EndSARs happened in Lagos, I told some of my colleagues and friends in a different forum, that look, if you sit back and think for a minute, the correctional facilities were attacked, the Police were attacked, the judiciary was attacked, these people are complaining about everybody concerned about the administration of justice.
“These are the organs that have a duty statutorily to dispense justice in their different roles. And if they chose not to go and burn down those places, not to go and burn down government houses, but to burn down courts, burn down police stations and burn down the correctional facility centers, then they are complaining about the administration of justice.
“What we should ask ourselves is, are they justified, do they have any justification for doing so? I think so. The justification might be right, might be wrong, but what we do as we did then, and we still do today to complain about the administration of justice in the country.
“We are not brave enough and I and you, that is the bench, and the bar must take responsibility for that. We have to let people understand how we work. We have a duty not to misrepresent ourselves to the people.
“When you go about criticizing the judgement of the courts, you are doing havoc to yourselves. As a professional, when a judge describes a legal practitioner in unsavory words, you are doing a disservice to yourselves as being a member of that same profession. We are the ones causing the public to look down on us.
“We need to come back home and pick up ourselves and re-engineer our efforts in society, particularly regarding the rule of law and the due administration of justice. It is a partnership that can never be dissolved if the legal profession wants to remain relevant in the Nigerian polity and even in the diaspora.
“The bar has never been away from the bench, nor the bench. Let our disagreements not be on an ego basis, on personal issues. Let our disagreements be on finding a way to serve the people better”, he advised.
In his remarks at the event, the NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau (SAN) stated that the bar and the bench have a symbiotic relationship, adding that they are agents of the same organism performing justice either on the bench or on the bar,
Maikyau expressed that the bench and the bar derive their lives from the organ of justice.
“It is justice that we are accountable to. So what we do on the bench and what we do at the bar, we do achieve one objective, which is justice.
“Our existence as a people squarely depends on justice. If we find or there is anything that threatens our existence as a nation or as a people, the reason is the absence of justice.
“Be it insecurity, economic problems, all of the myriads of issues that we are experiencing in this country, it is a function of the absence of justice. That is our responsibility and our primary call is to do justice, it is so fundamental to the existence of this country”, he said.
Maikayau referred to the statement credited to an Islamic Scholar Usman Dan Fodio in the 18th century who said “People can exist without religion”.
He said: “So all the religiosity that we are experiencing in this country, we can exist without it. But we cannot exist without justice. So at the heart of the existence of this nation, it is what their lordships do, is what we do as members of the bar.”
NBA President commended the Chief Judge of Lagos State for rekindling the spirit that binds the bench and the bar together toward providing justice for the people.