Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Kazeem Alogba, has expressed concern over the conduct of some lawyers in court. He, however, urged judges and lawyers to protect the sanctity of the legal profession in the country.
Alogba stated this while addressing lawyers, judges and other legal practitioners during a cocktail party held at the Ikeja High Court Complex as part of activities to mark the commencement of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL) yearly conference.
The CJ, who admonished the stakeholders to take a critical look into how the problem began, said: “I want to call on all of us, including my brother judges and judges throughout the whole gamut of the judiciary right from federal to the lowest arm at the local level, that we need to sit down and ask ourselves where have we gone wrong.”
Alogba recalled the year 2020 #EndSARS nationwide protest against police brutality and said that the perpetrators of the incidents might have burnt down the courts as a result of the failed justice system in Nigeria.
“When the incident of the #EndSARs happened in Lagos, I told some of my colleagues and friends in different fora that if you sit back and think for a minute, the correctional facilities were attacked, the police were attacked, the judiciary was attacked.
“It means these people are complaining about everybody who is concerned with the administration of justice.
“This is the arm of government that has a statutory duty to dispense justice in their different roles.
“If they chose not to go and burn down other places, not to go and burn down government house, but to burn down courts, burn down police stations and burn down the correctional centres, then they are complaining about the administration of justice.
“What we should ask ourselves is, are they justified, do they have any justification for doing so? I think so.
“The justification might be right or wrong but we still complain today about the administration of justice in the country.”
In his remarks, the NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau (SAN), said that the Bar and the Bench had a symbiotic relationship, adding that they were agents of the same organism performing justice either on the Bench or on the Bar,
Maikyau said that the Bench and the Bar derived their lives from the organ of justice. He said: “It is justice that we are accountable to. So, what we do on the Bench and the Bar are achieve one objective, which is justice. Our existence as a people depends squarely on justice.”
The NBA President, therefore, commended the chief judge for rekindling the spirit that binds the Bench and the Bar together towards providing justice for the people.
