Don’t monetise NBA elections – Ikokwu

Chief Guy Ike Ikokwu is an urbane lawyer with 54 years’ post- call experience. In this interview with Adelanwa Bamgboye, the London-trained attorney speaks on the forthcoming NBA general election and the standard of the legal profession among others. Excerpts: The NBA general election is fast approaching, what are your expectations?  Well, the tenure of […]

Chief Guy Ike Ikokwu is an urbane lawyer with 54 years’ post- call experience. In this interview with Adelanwa Bamgboye, the London-trained attorney speaks on the forthcoming NBA general election and the standard of the legal profession among others. Excerpts:

The NBA general election is fast approaching, what are your expectations?
 Well, the tenure of the present president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Augustine Alegeh, will expire in the middle of this year. So, a new president will be elected in the next general assembly which will come up in July this year. The post of the president under the NBA zoning programme has been zoned to the northern part of the country.  We understand that the two people who are at the forefront are Chief Joe-Kyari Gadzama and   A.B. Mahmoud, both of them claiming to be endorsed by the Arewa group. Again, there is problem within the Arewa group adopting any single candidate. Consequently, the two candidates are now going to other zones, they were at the eastern zone just few days ago. I also understand that they will come to the western zone very soon.
As a senior member of the Bar, I want to make two things very clear, one, that we are against monetisation of any campaign. And that any of such monetisation will go against whichever candidate it is attributed to. We know that the present regime and even the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission are very much against what they describe as anti-Bar activities by some senior advocates of the association. Many of them have been implicated in influencing some judicial officers not to do their work as honestly as they should. We know that the common man relies on the judiciary to promote the rule of law and safeguard the society. Some of us also want to make it very clear that in the light of what is going on now in the country under the present regime, any of the candidates who refused to embrace the primordial ethics of the Bar will not only be exposed but will be made to stand down. So, they must make sure that there are no skeletons in their cupboards which the EFCC and other anti-graft bodies are determined to expose. This will make the Nigerian Bar Association to be truly independent and capable of advising the government in a way that is devoid of any bad antecedent.
Two senior advocates have been charged before the Lagos high court for proving financial assistance to some judges. Is this development strange to you or is it a normal incident? 
It is not strange within the Bar. Many members of the Bar know that over the years, at least in the last 40 years, a lot of the ethics of the Bar were being breached.  They were being breached in the sense that they undermine the true meaning of law. They were being breach because many members of the Bar could see  that  the very principle which should be upheld  by both the junior and senior members of the Bar are no longer being practiced due to influence from the society, the government and the polity.  A lot of principles on which a nation should be built have been grossly undermined. Not only by lawyers but also by other professions that have gone down the drain, in the sense that they were not doing what they ought to do.
As a senior member of the Bar, how would you assess the standard of the legal profession in Nigeria?
To some extent it has improved because we have more technical resources because of the use of the internet. Now, you don’t need a whole library to research your law. You don’t need a law report of 10,000 pages to read, you can easily programme it into you legal disk. It is faster now to research cases than before when everything had to be done manually. But those who are using them are those who are already experienced and who can afford it. The younger member of the Bar cannot afford this technology, price wise. Some of these disks cost about N100,000.  So, to that extent the practice of law has been revolutionalised but for the younger generation of lawyers to benefit from the system, I think the system of education should be strengthened. However, there are some of these young lawyers who are doing very well and are able to come up with very good judicial propositions.
How can law be used to develop the country?
I have been very much interested in the affairs of Nigeria and in seeing how we can change Nigeria for the better, so that we will have more development and progress in the country. The Ghanaians have been able to live up to standard because of the history they went through.  They had to go through a revolution but we have not gone through a revolution. Now we have a constitution which most Nigerians disagree with which was imposed by the military. In actual fact, in the last 40 years the military has been ruling in Nigeria and have been able to manipulate the constitutional system in the country and given us a constitution which is more suited to the military than the civilians.
If you look at the constitution we have today, the 1999 constitution which was drafted by the military, it is tailored towards the military line.  In the military, only one person is in charge at the top and every other person below obeys his command. Civilians are not brought up that way and that is why we have problems in the constitution and that is why we have problems in the polity.