Why Senior Lawyers, Supreme Court Justices, Others Boycott NBA Conference
Well, let me say this, Let me take the last question first, I feel very very sad about what happened and we saw it coming. Ademola is here
When that boy, Akpata came on board, we the Yoruba leaders, the Egbe Amofin, took a unified position that we will not dignify that boy with our presence at any Bar gathering. Unfortunately, some of our people who took that decision alongside us betrayed that trust.
Coming from the background that I have, being a progressive when I make a decision when I say this is what I am going to do, even at the risk of my life, I will stick to that.
We made that decision in Ibadan here, Chief Olanipekun happens to be the leader of Egbe Omofin in Nigeria, and I happen to be his deputy. Chief Olanipekun and I have religiously kept to that position but unfortunately, some of our boys and girls felt otherwise because they wanted to be in one office or the other.
Again, everything boils down to poverty, Poverty of ideas, poverty of knowledge, poverty of integrity, it is not just material poverty. And that is where people are missing it. When we speak of poverty, people think we are talking about Naira and Kobo, no! When people are suffering from poverty of ideas, they tend to commit this type of self-mutilation. That is what happens to the NBA.
When I came in as a young lawyer, we held our elders in high esteem, Their words were laws. Whatever they say, we followed. But these sorosoke boys and girls came up and they set out to ruin the legal profession.
At the last Body of Benchers meeting, that guy attended the meeting…. Akpata, and because we didn’t buy his idea, he went and issued a release calling first CJNs ostrich and he said they sat down there, three former CJNs and the incumbent one, they sat down there playing ostrich, He made that release and one of the Supreme Court Justices asked us, how did this one become your president and we said it was these sorosoke boys.
The NBA Conference you are referring to, you will observe that no single Supreme Court Justice was there, No single Court of Appeal Justice was there, Apart from the Chief Judge of Lagos State who went there to represent Sanwo-Olu. Most of us senior lawyers were not there except those who betrayed the trust, the agreement we reached
That boy has never practised law before in his life, He is a transactional lawyer. He cannot even move a motion, He has never done so before, He said so himself. He doesn’t go to court. He is a businessman, He is a transactional lawyer and you make such a person your president,
Somebody who doesn’t even know the psychology of the court, he doesn’t know the geography of the court. And when we are telling them, look I was at a meeting as a young lawyer where our then CJN Uwais will have to bow to Kehinde Sofola. Who is he to speak where Kehinde Sofola is speaking? But the reverse is the case now. Those boys and girls want to climb the tree from the top, and they are ready to push everybody aside. Even you see some of them coming to court to ask whether they could mention their case first. Giving an example of one reason for saying that they want to go somewhere.
In our days, our seniors will draft us to court to go and watch Akinjide, Joke, Huleebs, and Sofola when they are coming to this Ibadan. All of us will throng the court premises to watch them, to learn from their fountain of Knowledge. Well, the reverse is the case now. Everybody wants money, money, money, money and that is the genesis. Our sense of value has been thrown to the winds. It is not peculiar to the Bar association, it is everywhere, and it is in all professions.
And you see, unbridled freedom breeds indiscipline and breeds corruption and that’s what we are having now. I never attended the meeting because I have said that I will never dignify him with my presence. Of course, the NBA Oyo ….. came to me for my support before going and we told them what to do and what not to do but the question is when they got there, what did they do? would you know?
But all we can tell you is that the majority of our members from the South-West, Egbe Amofin, were holding on to that principle. And I can assure you, I am saying this on air, you will not find any member of Egbe Amofin in that despicable act. They can bring out the video, you will not find any Yoruba man in that type of despicable thing, no, no, no, no, Awa loriki, we stand for something and if you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything. And that is the gospel we have been preaching to our members, the younger ones. Some of them are here in this studio, they are lawyers even though they are politicians, they are lawyers looking at me. You see, We tell them what to do and what not to do and they obey us, we obey our seniors.
Don’t forget, that we were the last to form a tribal union within the profession. We were against it initially, the Ibo started it, followed by the Arewa after the 1992 Bar Conference in Port Harcourt when the Bar was balkanized. The Bar came back together in 1998. We were in limbo for six years. And we saw this thing coming and we now have a country of anything goes, we now have quota teachers, quota professors, quota SAN, quota judges, quota governors, quota president, everything about our lives has been “quotarized”, We have so “quotarized” our lives that the centre can no longer hold.
