SAN: To be or not to be?

Oftentimes the awardees must have distinguished themselves as advocates and must have made significant contribution to the development of the legal profession. Over the weekend, the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) through its secretary, Barrister Ahmed Gambo Saleh, said that it had awarded the rank to 21 lawyers for this year.The list of latest SANs consists […]

Oftentimes the awardees must have distinguished themselves as advocates and must have made significant contribution to the development of the legal profession.
 Over the weekend, the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) through its secretary, Barrister Ahmed Gambo Saleh, said that it had awarded the rank to 21 lawyers for this year.
The list of latest SANs consists of 18 active lawyers, one of them a woman. The list also includes three university professors of law.
Some lawyers have started questioning the decision by the LPPC to include the son of a prominent lawyer, Wole Olanipekun, among 21 lawyers elevated over the weekend to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
According to an online report, three Nigerian lawyers alleged that the LPPC erred in awarding the SAN rank to Olabode, whose father, Wole Olanipekun, is one of Nigeria’s most prominent attorneys. The older Olanipekun was a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
The report said that “Oladapo Olanipekun holds a PhD in law, his linkedin page stated he studied for his PhD between 2005 and 2009. The website of his father’s law firm, which features his short bio did not list his date of graduation from the University of Lagos and the Nigerian Law School.
 “There are many other distinguished lawyers who have met that 10-year threshold and who were invited among the 50 candidates earlier shortlisted for the SAN honour. They were all interviewed in July, but left out while Olabode was chosen, despite the fact that he has not practiced for 10 years,” one critic of this year’s roster of SANs said.
The younger Olanipekun reportedly began practicing law at his father’s chamber, Wole Olanipekun and Co, shortly after completing his PhD in law in 2009.
Equally, others on social media have queried why Lagos lawyer Festus Keyamo’s name was dropped from the list.
Joe Gadzama, SAN, in an exclusive interview with our correspondent recently said: “Whoever is qualified should wear the silk as is the case in the UK. In UK if 100 applicants qualify, all the 100 will wear silk. They don’t peg it but in Nigeria, we peg it at a number – 15 out of a hundred or 200 who have qualified. The question that arises is that when 100 qualify, what will be the bases of reduction of the number to 15?
 “If you say someone has qualified and you say he is not wearing silk, if you say because of other pending cases or issues, fine but if one is qualified, I believe that one should be allowed to wear the silk. In other words the number of those qualified to wear silk should vary from year to year. In some years you can even have 100 depending on the requirements and the ability of the applicants to meet the requirements,” Gadzama said.
He added, however that “the good thing is that the LPPC looks at these rules every now and then, and kept on amending them. The rules when we became SAN over a decade ago were quite different from what we have today. So the society is not static and law itself is not static. One day we will get it completely right. The rules as we have them now are really good that whoever goes through the filtrations process to become a SAN carries the respect of everybody both within the rank and file of the profession and members of the public.”
Some legal practitioners have already called for the abolition of the status of SAN describing it as a cartel within the legal profession.
Lawyers under the aegis of Movement for the Abolition of the Rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said that there cannot be a level-playing ground in the legal profession unless the rank of Senior Advocate is abolished.
 “Today, a legal practitioner becomes a Senior Advocate of Nigeria if his father or uncle is one; same applies where a legal practitioner practices in the firm of a reputable Senior Advocate of Nigeria and in these cases the legal practitioner may have made little or no effort deserving of the conferment,” they said.
According to them, gone are the days when seasoned and highly qualified legal practitioners are conferred with the title of SAN, alleging that nowadays legal practitioners are elevated to the rank not on the ground of qualification but as a reward for sumptuous gifts.
The group maintained that the Legal Practitioners Act 1975 which created the status of Senior Advocate of Nigeria should be considered unreasonable having been discovered to be partial, unjust, oppressive and in bad faith  
According to the group, the Legal Practitioners Act 1975 does not make any provision for any reviewing of the powers of the Privileges Committee and as a result the powers conferred on the committee have allegedly been abused over the years.
In addition, the group noted that a situation where cases handled by Senior Advocates in the courts enjoy accelerated and expeditious hearing while those handled by the non-Senior Advocates, particularly the very junior members of the profession, suffer continuous and unabated adjournments and dragging without end must stop.
Specifically, they pointed out that the trend attracts clients for Senior Advocates of Nigeria and repels clients from non-Senior Advocate members of the profession.
“How do you explain a situation where a Senior Advocate of Nigeria together with other members of the inner bar have the exclusive right to sit on the front row of seats reserved for members of the bar in the courts, while other legal practitioners often cramp and squeeze themselves into congested and uncomfortable sitting positions, with some even standing, whenever the court has a full house, and this state of affairs remains immutable even when there is only one Senior Advocate of Nigeria in the court occupying the front row by practice and convention.”
Besides, the group contended that the situation often creates the impression among observing public that lawyers who sit compressed on other sitting rows are inferior to and cannot be classified in the same group as the advocate who alone, occupies the front row of the Bar seats.
“A clear case is the recent election petitions where most of the litigants, particularly the governors whose offices were being contested, instructed and directed as to the number of Senior Advocates of Nigeria to be retained for their cases, without actually having personal knowledge of the competence of  those Senior Advocates”, the group added.
However, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Mr. Roland Otaro, said that those calling for the abolition of the rank of SAN are mentally lazy.
 “Those who have been agitating for the abolition of the rank of SAN with all respect to them are mentally lazy,” he said.
According to him, what they ought to suggest was to bring in new amendment, new criteria. He added that  there is no profession in this world that does not have provision for attaining the highest in that profession.
“For instance in the university, we have professors. In the engineering professions we have fellowships. So there must be something to motivate you to get to the top of your profession,” he said.
 A renowned lawyer, Prof. Alfred Kasunmu in a recent interview said “I have always been part of the people criticizing some of the persons appointed SAN title. But if you look at it objectively, the difference between a very good lawyer and a bad lawyer is clear. But the one in between is really the problem. If you say A is better suited for appointment than B what is the yard stick for judging A as against B?”
The problem, according to him, is that there has been bending of rules in many cases in terms of the appointment of SAN.
“What has also created problems is the deliberate attempt to introduce a quota system into the appointment system by balancing the North with the East and the West. In fact now instead of grouping them into geopolitical zones, we now have cases in which we look at the state of origin”, Kasunmu said.
“Few years ago, there were about six very good candidates from Ogun State and if you judge objectively, I don’t see why all the six could not have been appointed SAN from Ogun State but because you have to establish a balance between Ogun, Oyo and Lagos states and so on they picked only one from Ogun State and spread the rest among the other Yoruba states with the result that people appointed from those other states should not, if you really based it on ability and performance at the Bar.
“The other issue is that there was a time when the Bar used to contribute effectively in terms of nomination and selection of SAN but for almost 10 years now the attention has been focused on the support of judges, particularly at the Supreme Court. So if you can get support from the Supreme Court, you are 60 per cent through, regardless of what your colleagues at the Bar feel about you.
“So to that extent the quality (of SAN) has been diluted and of course the quality at the Bar has also fallen. So if the quality has fallen from the Bar and it is from the Bar that you pick SAN from hence that is why we have this situation,” Kasunmu said.