Legal Eagle By May Agbamuche-Mbu, Email: may.mbu@thisdaylive.com
The 2014 NBA Elections held in Abuja have come and gone and we now have a new President Mr. Augustine Alegeh SAN.
The 2014 NBA Elections held in Abuja have come and gone and we now have a new President Mr. Augustine Alegeh SAN.
By all accounts the election was free and fair with no major mishaps and the electoral committee doing their best to ‘act by the book’. The long drawn out queues however, highlighted the dire need for a change in the NBA’s archaic style of delegate voting, with even separate queues for men and women. It was also glaring to see the very low turnout of women voting, especially at an election where for the first time in 20 years we had a female candidate in Mrs. Adefunke Adekoya SAN and notwithstanding the fact that we are supposedly in an era where the number of women is said to have increased in the profession.
Both the delegate voting and campaign guidelines desperately need to be reformed. The delegate conference is reserved strictly for statutory delegates only and others either elected or appointed as branch representatives. The delegates’ or voters’ list therefore comprises national officers and NEC members, five delegates from each registered branch, two co-opted deserving elder members from each registered branch, all SANs, all Benchers and one additional delegate for every 100 members of a registered branch showing evidence of payment of annual practicing fees and branch dues. The election guidelines prohibit the pasting of posters, billboards, handbills or any form of campaign material and even ban campaign tours and visits to branches by candidates and their agents and representatives. Not surprisingly candidates campaigned heavily using social media and text messages. How then can candidates who seek to represent members of the NBA reach the nooks and crannies of the country in a bid to sell their manifesto to NBA members from Aba to Zaria?
The solution no doubt, is Universal Suffrage: let everybody, ladies, gentlemen, the elderly lawyers and the lawyer just called to the bar before the elections have a right to vote. Let every lawyer have a say in the process. It then becomes their business whether they vote or not, but at least they would be empowered to vote.
As things stand now the NBA appears to be only for a select group and its impact, with all sincerity, has not spread to the four corners of the association. What is more at the end of the day, we all pay dues. Younger members in particular are disillusioned and members generally cannot see what they are getting in return for these dues and therefore increasingly cannot be bothered to pay them.
An all-inclusive, democratic NBA is what we look forward to, with an NBA election devoid of such words as ‘gentleman’s agreement’, ‘sponsorship of candidates by government’, ‘power brokers’, ‘moneybags’, ‘kingmakers’, ‘ghost voters’ and ‘zoning arrangement’ among so many terms synonymous with NBA elections in recent times.
Mr. Augustine Alegeh SAN certainly has his work cut out for him. I read his comprehensive and well articulated manifesto which had the slogan; Together We Can’. His vision is to a) refocus b) reform and c) reinvigorate the NBA. He has very laudable plans and a unique approach to the issue of welfare and ‘trade protection’. His manifesto further includes, among much else a commitment to – refocus on the welfare of members by instituting an insurance scheme for lawyers to be funded from Bar practicing fess; to provide specialised stamps and seals for lawyers; provide employment opportunities for young lawyers as research assistants to judicial officers; to be a proponent of the Rule of Law and voice of the people; to protect the legal industry in Nigeria from the influx of foreign law firms; to ensure that only lawyers are permitted to operate at the Corporate Affairs Commission, Lands Registries and all such other registries; to reinvigorate public confidence in the NBA; to strengthen and reform the NBA’s Human Rights Institute; to be more proactive and effective; to offer pro bono services for human right enforcement to indigent persons; and to be the voice of the Nigerian people. All these initiatives and much more besides are on President Alegeh’s hit list.
The NBA’s credibility must be restored to give the Bar greater legitimacy in the monitoring of public affairs. What matters at this point in time is implementation and a strict time line as Mr. Alegeh SAN has just 2 years. He must, come 29th August hit the ground running. Expectations are high that the time has come for the NBA to take its rightful position in this country. As the Ghana Bar Association did when they were in the forefront of the resistance to military dictatorship, withdrew their services temporarily between April and July 1978 when General I.K. Acheampong tried to impose a self-serving political and constitutional arrangement in Ghana. The NBA is considered rather elitist and therefore losing touch with ordinary Nigerians and their everyday problems..
The NBA should become more active in defence of human rights across the board. The laws are in place, the judges have been sensitised, only the Bar is yet to make an impact. This issue of human rights goes beyond the prisons. So it is indeed encouraging to see that Mr. Alegeh’s manifesto mentions the Human Rights Institute and pro bono legal services.
Mr. Alegeh appears to be people friendly and has all that is required to take the NBA to greater heights. Age and energy are on his side and he will hopefully not be hostile to change as the Bar in this modern world just has to change its traditional approach. Nigerian lawyers are as a whole far too conservative and what is needed now, when all is said and done is a more transparent, professionally efficient and fully inclusive Bar.
Expectations are that there is certainly going to be a change. The question therefore is will it be a new broom that will sweep away all the cobwebs or will it be the broom that will only sweep all the old problems under the carpet? Only time will tell.
All hands though must be on deck to return our great association to its glory days.
All hands though must be on deck to return our great association to its glory days.
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