Judge advocates for review of laws

Nwada made the call last Tuesday at the beginning of the 2013 Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association,NBA, Gwagwalada branch, which has the theme “Justice, Law and the Society’’. “The punishments provided for some crimes are not commensurate with the offences committed and ought to be changed. “We need a change in the judicial sector […]

Nwada made the call last Tuesday at the beginning of the 2013 Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association,NBA, Gwagwalada branch, which has the theme “Justice, Law and the Society’’.
“The punishments provided for some crimes are not commensurate with the offences committed and ought to be changed.
 “We need a change in the judicial sector and it is part of our civic responsibility to do that,’’ Nwada said.
 The judge also pointed out that the standard of adherence to ethics of the law profession was falling due to the corrupt attitude of some senior lawyers and called on them to avoid corrupt practices.
Delivering a lecture on the topic, “Nigeria: Law and the challenges of nation building’’, Mr Uwakwe Abugu, a lecturer at University of Abuja, said everything about Nigerians was a creation of law and we must turn to it if we must grow and become relevant in the international community.
 Abugu said nation building is always a work in progress and the law must achieve its aim by constant engineering and re-engineering by way of reforms in the legislature, judicial or otherwise.
 He said the components of nation building include institutional building, political entity and building of common sense of purpose.
 “The law clearly sets the agenda for building a robust political entity of Nigeria but the extent to which this has been realized in the 53 years of our nationhood remains a mute point,’’ he noted.
 In his address, the branch chairman of the association, Mr John Amokaha, noted that the programme was coming at a critical time as the country marked 100 years of amalgamation.