A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Usman Ogwu Sule, has decried the rate at which the legal profession is declining, saying it is “at a critical crossroad.”

He lamented that the regulatory bodies have failed to act decisively and insisted that the Legal Practitioners Act (LPA) and Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) must be enforced without compromise.

Delivering a paper at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Ondo Branch Law Week titled, “Dying Embers of Professional Ethics; Blunted Swords of the Gatekeepers”, Sule painted a stark picture of a profession once defined by integrity but now battling “mediocrity, self-interest and misconduct.”

The session, attended by eminent jurists including Prof Yusuf Ali (SAN), was part of a week-long programme aimed at confronting the challenges facing the Bar.

He said: “The Bar ought to be the blazing hearth of justice, but the swords of the gatekeepers have grown blunt, and if we fail to rekindle these embers, the consequences will be fatal.”

He stated that the NBA leadership, the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC), senior advocates, and law faculties are all guilty of allowing ethical decline to fester.

He stressed that the LPA and Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) must be enforced without compromise. Citing recent LPDC rulings, Sule warned lawyers against fiduciary breaches.

“In NBA v. Bruno (2024), a lawyer was suspended for five years and ordered to refund N19.5 million after selling a client’s property and pocketing the proceeds.

“In Soyemi v. Lawal (2024), another was suspended for collecting N3.8 million for services never rendered, including N1.1 million for “police processes” that never occurred.

“These cases show that the profession still has the tools to defend its integrity, but the will to use them consistently is lacking,” he said. The Abuja-based SAN, however, reminded lawyers that procedural lapses can destroy cases, pointing to Okafor v. Nweke (2007) and a July 9, 2025, Lagos High Court ruling in Alice Iyabo Ojo v. Lizzy Anjorin Lawal, where a case was struck out because a required form was unsigned and the lawyer ordered to pay N500,000 in costs.

On the NBA seal requirement, he cited the Supreme Court’s recent decision Nnaduaka v. Anunobi, which treated the absence of the seal as a correctable irregularity but still a breach of professional responsibility.

Sule, therefore, called for urgent reform, stronger disciplinary action, ethical mentorship, and a return to core values of service, justice and honour.

“Where lawyers were once the conscience of the society, we now risk becoming its cautionary tale,” he warned.