NBA to eradicate quackery in legal practice

The Ilorin branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has devised more means of identifying quackery practice among its members.

These method include the seals, stamps and names in the directory just as it threatened criminal procedures against any person, “irrespective of his status” caught in the act.

The Chairman of the branch, Manzuma Isah, at a press briefing yesterday in Ilorin heralding the association’s biennial conference commencing tomorrow, said the NBA could not afford to shirk responsibility providing judicial direction for courts and litigants.

Besides, the local NBA as another way of sanitizing the profession is poised to withdrawal the practicing licenses of erring members who put pecuniary interests above ethical consideration while discharging their duties.
The theme of the conference is ‘Society and legal profession: Imperatives of ethical rebirth.’

Isah said: “We are trying to put in place an effective disciplinary measure to punish any of our members who would go to court, because he has been paid, and put personal interest above his interest to the public; which is what we call the duty of counsel to court and more or less duty of counsel to the nation.’’

Speaking on the alleged decline of core values in the legal profession, the NBA leader said the development could not be divorced from the general decline in all the nation’s socio-political and economic sectors.

According to him, “the lawyers are part and parcel of the Nigerian society and once there is a general decay, it affects virtually everything. But we are of the view that once we have a clean legal profession it will be able to checkmate other
sectors.

“This time around we have resolved to bring to the fore the consequences of professional misdemeanour to the notice of our members so as to ensure a virile bar which will translate to a virile nation. The essence is to address the current challenges in the legal profession.”

For Isah, the choice of the theme was a clever way to sincerely x-ray Nigeria as a whole and see how the legal profession could re position itself to assist in the betterment of the country especially in the area of restoring its sharp decline in the core values.