By Jibrin Samuel Okutepa SAN
There is a need to overhaul the way legal practice is being practised in Nigeria.There is wickedness in the way some lawyers practice law in Nigeria. These sets of lawyers are specialists in erecting roadblocks to justice.
These lawyers look very pius in appearances but wicked in actions. The noble profession is being made ignoble by the ways some senior lawyers have turned legal practice into instruments of obstruction for the attainment of justice in Nigeria.
When you see these sets of senior legal practitioners, they look pius outwardly but very deadly and wicked in practice. They used processes as obstruction to truth in the name of the right to fair hearing. Nobody can put them to checks. They are just law unto themselves. They know themselves. They see themselves as the alpha and omega of legal practice.
But it is the right to fair hearing available to Satan. I do not think so. The right to fair hearing is being stretched to a ridiculous level in legal practice in Nigeria. For instance it is not unusual in election petitions cases to see lawyers representing the candidates and political parties declared as winners of election by INEC in teaming up with lawyers hired by INEC to file all manners of motions or objections in other to put roadblocks to the justice of the case.
Their sing songs, in most cases, are that INEC being party to election petitions has the right to fair hearing and can file any objection and team up with the supposed winners of elections.With due respect, the right to fair hearing should not be used in aid of evils and evildoers, which is what most winners of election in Nigeria as declared by INEC do.
These supposed winners, in most cases, do what the law said they should not do. God himself institutionalised the right to fair hearing in the Garden of Eden. Because God knows that Satan was evil and what it did was evil, He did not accord Satan the right to fair hearing in the Garden of Eden. God was neutral. INEC should and was created by law to be neutral.
Why should INEC created to be neutral and non-partisan aligned with partisan parties in election petitions. Why should INEC lawyers be seen in election petitions cases to be more Catholic than the pope. Rule one of the rules of professional conduct puts obligations on us as lawyers to foster and promote the cause of justice and to avoid doing anything that obstructs the stream of justice.
It is not unusual to see lawyers in the offices of legal practitioners defending supposed winners of elections being led or leading the legal team of INEC in defence of election petition cases. How ethical is this practice.
The legal profession has to do something to ensure that we have undiluted justice in Nigeria courts.
The way some legal practitioners go about legal practice in Nigeria needs to be thoroughly considered. The legal principality and powers have laid serious legal mines for the collapse of democracy in Nigeria. The kind of legal practice in electoral jurisprudence in defence of election petition cases that seem to be in subversion of democracy in Nigeria needs to be checked.
