Kemisola Oye
THE Lagos State Chief Judge, Justice Kazeem Alogba has expressed concern over the quality of lawyers prosecuting cases in courts.
He said the conduct of lawyers that are seen nowadays is worrisome, adding that the situation becomes more disturbing when juxtaposed with the fact some of them have children who have equally become legal practitioners and see what they are doing.
“If what we saw that made us decide to be legal practitioners is now vanishing in our very eyes, then there is cause for concern”, he said.
Justice Alogba stated this on Tuesday night 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 those saying that the legal profession ought to be doing better and also stressed that there was the need to bring back the good old days but with newer things.
“We need to bring the shine back to the legal profession. Whether anybody likes it or not, the legal profession is the primus interfris amongst 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 said.
Justice Alogba recalled the year 2020 nationwide protest against Police brutality.
He said: “When the incident of the End SARS happened in Lagos, I told some of my colleagues and friends in different fora 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 so, to dispense justice in their different roles. And if they chose to burn down those places, not to go and burn down government houses, but to burn down courts, burn down Police Stations and burn down correctional centres, 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 we do as we did then, 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 a duty to let people understand how we work. We have a duty not to misrepresent ourselves to the people.
“When we go about criticizing the judgment of the courts, we are doing havoc to yourselves. As a professional, when a judge describes a legal practitioner in unsavoury words, you are doing a mis-service 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 ourselves up and re-engineer our efforts in society, particularly with reference to 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 disagreement not be on an ego basis, on personal issues. Let our disagreement be on finding a way to serve the people better”, the CJ admonished.
The NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau (SAN), in his remarks at the occasion, opined that the bar and the bench have a symbiotic relationship, adding that they are agents of the same organ performing justice either on the bench or on the bar,
Maikyau argued 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 to 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 myriad 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 actually 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.”
Maikyau commended the Chief Judge for rekindling the spirit that binds the bench and the bar together towards providing justice for the people.
Eighteen-Eleven Media