Lagos Chief Judge, Alogba, Laments Over Lawyers’ Conduct
The Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Kazeem Alogba has expressed concern over the conduct of lawyers in the courts.
He described as worrisome the appearance of many lawyers before the judges, which to him is below the expected standard.
He said,”Some of these lawyers have children who have equally become lawyers and now watch the bad conduct of their parents in the court. If what we saw that made us to decide to be legal practitioners is now vanishing in our eyes, then there is course for concern.”
Justice Alogba expressed his displeasure on Tuesday while addressing lawyers, judges and other legal practitioners at a cocktail party held at 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.
Calling for reorientation of legal practitioners, the chief judge stressed that there was need to bring back the very good old days with introduction of modern things.
“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.
Justice Alogba recalled the year 2020 nationwide protest against police brutality.
He said: “When the incident of the EndSARs 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 was attacked, the judiciary was attacked, these people are complaining about everybody who is concerned about the administration of justice.
“These are the organs that have a duty that have a duty statutorily so, to dispense justice in their different roles. And if they chose not to go and burn down those places, not to go and burn down government house, but to burn down courts, burn down police stations and burn down the correctional facility 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 mis-represent ourselves to the people.
“When we go about criticizing judgment of the courts, we are doing a havoc to yourselves. As a professional, when a judge describe a legal practitioner in unsavory 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 up ourselves and re-engineer our efforts in the society, particularly with reference to the rule of law and 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 ego basis, on personal issues. Let our disagreement be on finding a way to serve the people better”, he advised.
The NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau (SAN) in his remarks at the occasion, stated that the bar and the bench has a symbiotic relationship adding that they are agents of the same organism 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 depend on justice. If we find or there is anything that threatens our existence as a nation or as a people, the reason is absence of justice.
“Be it insecurity, economic problems, all of the myriads 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 made reference to the a statement credited to an Islamic Scholar Usman Dan Fodio in 18th century who said “people can exist without religion”.
He said: “So all the religiousity 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