Post COVID-19 Lockdown: We Need to Amend Our Laws to Allow Technology Drive Law Practice – Niyi Akintola, SAN
Chief Niyi Akintola (SAN) is the chairman of the caretaker committee of the South west lawyers forum ( Egbe Amofin). In this interview, he calls for the amendment of the constitution and other relevant laws to enable technology and international best practices to drive the post lockdown law practice, discusses the forthcoming NBA election and why Egbe Amofin adopted candidates for the election. The Nation’s Legal Editor, John Austin Unachukwu met him. Exerpts:
What do you consider to be the lessons of the COCID-19 lockdown experience as it relates to law practice?
The COVID-19 lockdown has really revolutionise law practice in the country. We have embraced Scoop, Skype conferences in trying to discuss legal issues with colleagues in the law firm and our clients in different locations.
How does this affect our courts in the determination of cases before them?
We just discovered that it possible for us to adopt that practice at appellate courts level, but definitely it will require the amendment of the Evidence Act, Practice Directions, Rules of Court and so on. We may equally need to amend the constitution because no Rules of Court or Practice Direction can override the provisions of the constitution.
The lockdown experience has brought the issue of lawyers’ welfare to the fore. How do we get a comprenensive welfare package for Nigerian lawyers both old and young?
Though some of us had hitherto done a lot to improve the welfare of the juniors at both branch and chamber levels, but now at the national level we have to institutionalize it. But again and again we have to diversify our practice to broaden our revenue and income generation base.
Why?
Because courtroom practice doesn’t pay much again, the development of the internet has seriously affected law practice because you can virtually get everything on the goggle now. Whatever you need on the law of torts, law of contract and so on. People no longer consult lawyers on certain things because those things are done on goggle. So any lawyer that remains complacent and refuses to change and adapt to the ICT revolution will only have himself or herself to blame.
How do we do this?
We will do that by diversifying our practice areas, we have to form partnerships, we have to expand our scope. The idea of one man business is no longer the in vogue in the legal profession
And this is the time to start, do you know that all the lawyers in Ibadan, about 7,000 of us are not up to lawyers in one chamber in New York USA
The former President of Saouth Africa, Frederik Willem de Klerk is heading a law firm of over 4,000 lawyers in South Africa. Myself and Mallam Yusuf Ali (SAN) have been to his office several times in Cape Town He still practices law, his chamber is on Long street in Cape Town City Centre in South Africa a high rise building.
In which areas do we need to improve to meet up with international best practices?
We are still living on past glory here, still clinging on to this old, archaic and anachronistic system of law practice. We have to change our system, we have to amend the Legal Practitioners Act to allow other lawyers to come in from other parts of the world so that we can expand our practice. I know of a law firm in Lagos that wanted to go into partnership with a foreign firm in South Africa, when the South African firm gave their conditions to the Nigerian law firm, the Nigerian law firm could not meet up. For instance, I was in Birmingham in December 2019, I went for a Notary Public to notarise a document for me, for my son, the lawyer told me that they were over 6, 700 lawyers in the law firm, a lot of them were in London, in Newcastle, in Cambridge and so on. I went there with my son to notarise a document. I couldn’t tell him that the biggest law firm in Nigeria has about 100 lawyers. When my son told him that I am a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, he was excited and opened discussions with me, we started chatting but I couldn’t tell him the size of our practice here, because it is anacronistic and archaic, not even up to 500 lawyers. He notarised the document for me and I paid E150 for what we do for almost N10. 00 here.
Why are we this backwards?
We are backwards because we put in so many blocks on our Rules, we say don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t advertise, don’t use shining sign boards etc. We should do something about our Rules, it contains a lot of don’ts which are no longer in tandem with current realities. We have to do something to adapt it to the dynamic and ever changing global best practices.
What is your view on how we train our lawyers?
There should be many inns of court in the country, the campuses of the Nigerian Law Schools should be converted to the inns of court where lawyers are called to the Bar. We over centralize things in Nigeria, that is the bane of our national development. If we want to develop this country, we must embrace international best practices. Remember that the United Kingdom is a unitary State, yet they decentralise so many things. We over centralize so many things In Nigeria here, things like vehicle number plates should not be centralized, we have to decentralize so many things if we really want to develop as a country.
What about the welfare of Nigerian lawyers, how do we improve it?
Some of us have been paying Bar Practicing Fees for many juniors in the past few years without ,making noise about it, we pay for accommodation for them and even sponsor a lot of juniors to international Bar Association conference without any noise.
But unfortunately we now have a crop of lawyers who have no respect for the system by their utterances and their conducts, the kind of welfare package they now extend to our junior lawyers whereas some senior lawyers have had a well organized welfare package for the branches without anybody publicizing it.
What do you mean by this?
Giving welfare to lawyers has now become a subject of media razzmatazz but it is not supposed to be like that. One of the hallmarks of a good lawyer is not to be flippant, but flippancy has now become the order of the day. Take for instance the of giving palliative to juniors, palliative has been part of the legal profession from time immemorial, the likes of chief Afe Babalola( SAN) will never make noise about it, in last one decade or so, Lateef Fagbemi ( SAN) and I have been doing palliatives for our juniors here in Ibadan branch. We have what is called a revolving loan for younger lawyers. Where we gave money to the branch free so that the branch can use it as revolving loans, we never made noise about it. Under this COVID-19 Pandemic, millions of naira have been donated by Fagbemi and I, we cannot make noise about it, even after that, other branches came and we gave them too. Our leader, Yusuf Ali ( SAN) single handedly built the High Court in his home town, Ifetedo in Osun State and furnished it, no noise was made about it. I single handedly built the Chief Magistrates Court in my village, I single handedly built the Divisional Police headquarters, I single handedly built the Judges quarters and furnished it, gave them standby generators so that our younger ones who practice there will have a place top practice. Well furnished modern courts are what Yusuf Ali and I did in our respective villages, no noise about it. Asking lawyers to go and start collecting food at Shoprite, like Almajiris, during this COVID-19 Pandemic is an insult to Nigerian lawyers.
Many of us including Chief Wole Olanipekun ( SAN), Lateef Fagbemi ( SAN), Yusuf Ali ( SAN), Dr. Akin Onigbinde ( SAN), Kunle Kalajaye (SAN) I know how many lawyers who have approached us during this COVID-19, from Abuja, from Kaduna, from Ilorin and we did much for them without making noise about it. No publication nothing, about it. Flippancy is not part of the quality of a good lawyer. I know many colleagues who spent tens of millions to assist colleagues this time, there was no party held for it.
There is allegation that the process you used to adopt Dele Adesina (SAN) as Egbe Amofin candidate for the Presidency of NBA in 2020 election was skewed in his favour, what is your reaction to this?
Well, in the first place, nobody has come to us to say that he is rejecting the adoption of Egbe Amofin. What Egbe did was very transparent, every one of the would be aspirant came before the Egbe Amofin at the meeting to express their desire and I remember that day there were four of them that came forward, they were all unanimous in electing me to chair the committee, nobody raised any form of objection there.
What happened at the meeting?
I was seated in the crowd when I was invited to the high table and all of them expressed their confidence in me and the committee. We had a criteria for the assignment and when one of them requested for the criteria, I directed the Secretary Dr. Akintayo to forward it to him. The issue of zoning was to bring in some trouble but that was the first thing we tackled by adopting the template . Having done that, I remember my brother silks, Dele Adesina ( SAN), Dr. Tunde Ajibade (SAN), Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro ( SAN) and Awoniyi. Incidentally, the four of them that came forward that day were going to contest for the presidency of the Bar. Two of them were from Ekiti State, while the other two were from Osun State. Our leader, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) didn’t manipulate anybody, he never participated in selecting anybody. I said ok let us select all the Chairmen of the branches to do this job. So the chairmen of the branches were brought out and were mandated to sit under me and screen the candidates.
How did you conduct the screening exercise?
Those chairmen were mandated to go back to go back to their various branches and discuss the candidates in their branches, get feed back and then take the feed back to the secretariat of Egbe Amofin. We had three meetings before we set the criteria which is: You must have a good practice, you must not be just a Bar man, you must be a legal practitioner in the real sense of the word. Must have a viable means of income, must be honest, must not have been convicted of any crime, you must not have a pending case before the disciplinary committee of the Bar. Must not be facing criminal trial in any court any where in the world.
And what else?
Level of practice must be very good and the candidate must have participated actively on bar activities whether at local, national and international level. Again such a contestant must have geographical spread because Egbe alone cannot make anybody president of the Bar. That was the mandate we gave to the chairmen, we also urged them to contact their counterparts in other zones.
Why?
Because me as the chairman in Abeokuta can speak with my counterpart in Zamfara State and say who will you prefer to be our President and get us feed back. That was what we used, so when one of them demanded for the criteria we gave it to him and we went to voting and because of this template which we adopted, we now said let us have Ondo /Ekiti first in this new arrangement. So we presented that to Muyiwa Akinboro (SAN) and Awoniyi and they agreed to step down. We now agreed and said, now that justice is coming to Egbe Amofin let us work together so that next time another zone will produce and not that one state will produce and produce again .
What happened after the announcement?
Mr. Akinboro withdrew, he withdrew formally withdrew from the contest and commended us. I remember Femi Falana calling me saying that we should commend Akinboro and assure him that next time, and I said no, don’t let us jump the gun.
Why did you do this?
When it comes to Oyo/ Osun, Oyo /Osun and the South west would decide who it is going to be.
So there was no manipulation of any kind, as a matter of fact I didn’t vote as the chairman. It was overwhelming in favour of the person we adopted. It was 27 votes against four votes. And that was without my vote, I didn’t vote as chairman, I remained neutral in the whole process nobody manipulated anybody contrary to the insinuations being peddled here and there. Chief Olanipekun never called any of us to any meeting. I consider it an insult for anybody to insinuate that the committee was manipulated. I consider it an insult for anybody to be saying I was manipulated, who can manipulate me, chief Niyi Akintola in this country . I consider it as an insult as a matter of fact, some even went as far as saying that I was trying to protect the interest of my wife because my wife is an High Court Judge and is from Ekiti State.
Is your wife from Ekiti State?
Who told them that my wife is from Ekiti, my wife is from Oyo State. These are the kind of stories being bandied about. But we are not moved, we are talking to ourselves, all the contestants are our brothers, they are our own. When we were discussing the idea of constituting the committee of chairmen to conduct the screening exercise, other would be contestants from other zones were with us, they were all in Ibadan. Different would be contestants from Onitsha, from Lagos, from Warri and other parts of the country were all with us at the meeting. And nobody raised eyebrows, many Senior Advocates of Nigeria from the South west were there, it was very unprecedented because non of our meetings had commanded such high level of attendance . The meeting was attended by the former chariman Body of Benchers, chief Ajomale, former President of the NBA and Bencher Mrs. Pricilla Kuye, Pa Emmanuel Abiodun, all of them were there so I don’t know where this nonsense emanated from that the meeting was manipulated, because of who.
How many branches of Egbe Amofin attended the meeting?
We had about 31 branch chairmen that took part in the screening exercise, who applied our criteria. Everybody in the legal profession who knows my relationship with Deacon Dele Adesina will know that we are not the best of friends. In fact in Dele’s acceptance speech he stated that many people asked why he accepted my chairmanship of the committee. Though we had our differences, I have pushed everything behind and moved on. If for anything, Tunde Ajibade and Muyiwa Akinboro are closer to me than Dele Adesina, they have been my aburo here in Ibadadan. Akinboro is from my zone here in Ibadan/ Osun zone to which I belong. Tunde Ajibades father was my benefactor, he was one of the seniors that trained me here, I have nothing in common with Dele at all. So for anybody to say that we skewed it in favour of Dele is an insult to me .
Most of us have now become television lawyers, some lawyers that cannot move motion in courts now go to Channels and AIT moving motions and citing constitutions on issues they know little or nothing about. That is what the legal profession has degenerated to, people are now discussing pending cases in court on the television, they cite laws on the television and I ask, what manner of lawyers would be going to television stations Monday to Fridays to discuss laws in the mornings not even in the evenings when most of their colleagues are in the courtrooms, the chambers or in the library researching the law. Today, if a matter is filed in court, before it is assigned to a judge it is already on the pages of newspapers. Before it comes for mention, it is already being discussed on the TV, legal practice is now being media driven, it is so unfortunate. As young as I am at the Bar, I didn’t meet it that way at all. Now we now have boys and girls that have left practice to practice the Bar, some of them don’t know the geography of the country, some of them don’t know the psychology of the country imagine somebody that confessed to somebody that he has not been ton court in the last 15 years to be my president. How do you reconcile that? Let us put on our thinking caps, lets be reasonable about this, our seniors didn’t hand it over to us this way.
Our leaders should not leave the Bar, we need a consummate Bar leader to lead us back our lost glory. The recognition we have in the society came as a result of our nobility.
It is alleged that the criteria you used for adoption of candidates for the forthcoming NBA elections were skewed in favour of a pre determined Presidential candidate. What really happened sir
I have heard that several times and I don’t agree with that at all. Like I said, our profession thrives on hierarchy, order, respect for others views and leadership. We had a meeting in August 2019, our leaders and Bar leaders were there and after chief Wole Olanipekun, I happen to be the next active Senior Advocate of Nigeria. I was called upon to come and chair the meeting and every body applauded it. It was based on order, seniority and respect.
