NBA-SPIDEL: I’m Worried About Lawyers’ Conduct – Lagos CJ

The Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Kazeem Alogba has expressed concern over the conduct of some lawyers in court.

Alogba expressed the concern 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 to mark the commencement of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL) annual conference.

“The conduct of lawyers nowadays is worrisome.

“The situation becomes more worrisome when it is considered that some of them have children who have equally become lawyers and see what they are doing.

“We need to bring the shine back to the legal profession.

“Whether anybody likes it or not, the legal profession is the primus 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.

Alogba recalled the year 2020 #EndSARS nationwide protest against police brutality and said that the perpetrators of the incidents might have burnt down the courts as a result of the failed justice system in Nigeria.

“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.

“It means these people are complaining about everybody who is concerned with the administration of justice.

“This is the arm of government that has a statutory duty to dispense justice in their different roles.

“If they chose not to go and burn down other places, not to go and burn down government house, but to burn down courts, burn down police stations and burn down the 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 or wrong but we still complain today about the administration of justice in the country.”

Speaking, the NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau, SAN, said that the Bar and the Bench had a symbiotic relationship adding that they were agents of the same organism performing justice either on the Bench or on the Bar.

Maikyau said that the Bench and the Bar derived their lives from the organ of justice.

“It is justice that we are accountable to. Our existence as a people squarely depends on justice,” he said.

Maikyau commended the Chief Judge for rekindling the spirit that binds the bench and the bar together towards providing justice for the people.