NBA PRESIDENT HOLDS INTERACTIVE SESSION WITH LEGAL PRACTITIONERS IN BORNO STATE; ATTENDS LAW WEEK AND PAYS COURTESY VISIT TO THE CHIEF JUDGE OF BORNO STATE AND OTHER CRITICAL STAKEHOLDERS

Dear Colleagues,

In continuation of the efforts of the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (“NBA”) to constantly engage with the legal community and to ensure that the NBA indeed works for its members, the President of the NBA – Mr. Olumide Akpata recently led some members of his team on a 2-day working visit to Maiduguri, the Borno State Capital.

Upon arrival on the 21st day of March 2022, the NBA President held an interactive session with members of the Maiduguri and Biu Branches of the NBA. At this Session, the NBA President reassured legal practitioners in the State of the focus of the National Executive Committee towards ensuring an all-inclusive Bar with particular emphasis on the professional well being and general welfare of its members. He reminded the members that the Branches of the NBA are the very critical constituent parts that make up the Association and stated that the various Branches must rise up to take their place, within each jurisdiction, for the promotion of the rule of law and improving the welfare of the members within their domain.

The NBA President further outlined some of the steps already taken by the National Executive Committee to improve the welfare of the members, especially in the area of comprehensive insurance cover for all legal practitioners in Nigeria and access to finance for lawyers, sustenance of the production and delivery of free stamps upon payment of Annual Bar Practicing fee, increment of the Leadway Assurance Benefit to N2Million, continuous disbursement of the N1Million to lawyers with critical ailment and/or permanent disabilities, free law pavilion subscription for young lawyers, subsidized law pavilion rates for senior members of the Bar, addressing the rise in harassment of lawyers by security operatives through the NBA Security Agency Relations Committee (NBA-SARC), revitalization of the Institute of Continuing Legal Education, amongst others.

A number of other Bar-related issues were discussed during the interactive session including, but not limited to, the administration of justice system in Borno State, peculiar Branch related issues, continuing legal education peculiar to the jurisdiction, expansion of the existing legal space and provision of more opportunities for lawyers within the State, specialization and diversification of legal practice.

Earlier on, the NBA President in the company of the NBA Treasurer – Mrs Mercy Agada, NBA Assistant Publicity Secretary – Mr. Ferdinand Naza, paid a visit to the Chief Judge of Borno State – Hon. Justice Kashim Zannah to understudy and witness the formal activation of the Electronic Filing System in the State Judiciary which was set up to engender speedy and effective dispensation of justice. The NBA President further engaged extensively with the Chief Judge on strategies for further strengthening the existing partnership between the Bar and Bench in the State.

The NBA delegation also paid a courtesy visit to the Attorney General of Bornu State – Mr. Kaka Shehu Lawan. The visit provided the NBA President and his team with an opportunity to engage extensively with the Attorney General on strategies that will ensure speedy trial of matters within the State and other ancillary matters.

On the 22nd of March 2022, the NBA President attended the opening ceremony of the Law Week jointly organised by the NBA Maiduguri and Biu Branches. A copy of the speech delivered by the NBA President at this event is attached hereto.

Dr. Rapulu Nduka
Publicity Secretary,
Nigerian Bar Association

See Below a copy of the speech delivered by the NBA President

REMARKS BY OLUMIDE AKPATA, PRESIDENT OF THE NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION AT THE 2022 LAW WEEK OF THE MAIDUGURI AND BIU BRANCHES OF NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION TAKING PLACE AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CENTRE, MAIDUGURI BORNO STATE

Protocols

Introduction

It is my pleasure to address you today at the 2022 Law Week celebrations of the Maiduguri & Biu Branches of the Nigerian Bar Association. As some of you here may know, my trip to Maiduguri has been long in the making. I had initially promised to visit your Branches during the NBA national election campaigns in 2020. Coincidentally, my trip was aborted by Covid-19 which is part of the theme for this year’s Law Week.

Thereafter, I promised that I would visit before the end of my tenure as President of the NBA. By the grace of God, I have been able to fulfil that promise and I am glad that we are all alive to witness this day.

There is no gainsaying the fact that by virtue of my office, I am precluded from expressing any preferences for any of the Branches of the NBA. Nevertheless, it is an open secret that I belong to a Branch of the Association, Lagos Branch and coincidentally, they are also in the middle of their Law Week activities this week. My presence here is therefore a testament to how highly I regard your two Branches.

I am also particularly delighted to visit Maiduguri to witness first-hand the fresh leadership style of His Excellency the Governor of Borno State, Prof Babagana Umaru Zulum. Frankly speaking, I think that the citizens and residents of Borno State are blessed to have the perfect combination of two forward thinking persons in charge of two arms of government in the State at the same time

in the persons of Governor Zulum and His Lordship, the Chief Judge of Borno State, Honourable Justice Kashim Zannah. I have not had extensive interaction with the Honourable Speaker of the Borno State House of Assembly but I am sure that he is equally progressive minded.

Ladies and gentlemen, if there were any lingering doubts about the continuing relevance of the various Branches of our Association to the overall attainment of the aims and objectives of the NBA as outlined in the Constitution of the Nigerian Bar Association 2015 (as amended), such doubts must have been completely erased by the selection of the various Law Week themes by the Branches. In your case you selected, “Technology as a Tool for Access to Justice During Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond”, a theme that is as topical as it is critical especially in the context of the extraordinary times which the legal professional and indeed the Nigerian society have faced in the past 24 months. One State that particularly needs a topic like this, is Borno State where in
addition to the Covid-19 pandemic, there have also been the issue of insurgency and its impact on the socio-economic and political space, including the legal profession. For this reason I must commend the Law Week planning committee and the Executive Committee of the Maiduguri and Biu Branches for selecting this theme.

As I have said on countless occasions, the world we live in is a complex, dynamic and an ever changing one and any person, group of persons, profession or field of life that desires to survive in this world must always adapt and re-adapt to the changes in the society otherwise such person or profession will be left behind to atrophy and die while the rest of the world will move on. With the growth of technology comes an unending struggle of law to keep pace with technological developments and disruptions, particularly in the business space as the fourth industrial revolution continues to emerge and the world tries to grapple with the economic realities of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A well-known American Jurist, Louis Brandeis once observed that, “legal work was limited by time and space because lawyers were dependent on local transport, postal services and contemporary communications technology”. Over a century later, Brandeis’ observation still holds true especially in the third world countries like Nigeria. Like many aging industries, the legal profession in Nigeria has been slow to perceive external threats and slower still to respond to new patterns of service delivery and is still characterized by absence of necessary infrastructure and gadgets in the courts as a result of which the judges are still forced to record proceedings in long hands, large volumes of laws, law reports, etc, analog filing and documentation management
system, all of which conspire to cause the delay and congestion of cases in courts. For a system that is designed to serve the largest economy in Africa, this is simply not acceptable.

The above notwithstanding, it has not been all gloom and doom. Technology has already
revolutionised the practice of law in Nigeria in significant ways and affected the speed of delivery of quality service, efficiency, billing/accountability, practice management et al. Of course, we all know that without the use of technology, no law firm would have survived the extraordinary year we faced in 2020 and 2021. We must therefore not relent in the quest for the adoption of digital technology for effective and efficient justice delivery in the country. It is only a bit disappointing that most of us had to wait for the COVID-19 pandemic before realising the place of technology as an essential tool for law practice and the benefits of leveraging technology to facilitate access to justice in Nigeria. But it is better late than never.

One thing I promised in the build to the 2020 NBA election was that we will engage the Council of Legal Education to effect a transformational change to the legal training that prospective lawyers in Nigeria receive. It remains inexplicable how Nigerian law students in 2021 are receiving the same university education that was available five decades ago while their counterparts in developed and even other developing economies are receiving legal education that reflect the current economic realities. It is in this regard that we have empowered the Committees created by the NBA Constitution and equipped them to execute their mandates. For instance, the NBA Legal Education Committee is organising a Legal Education Summit next week in Ado Ekiti in this area.

It is also consistent with the above that I must commend My Lord the Chief Judge of Borno State Honourable Justice Kashim Zannah who is now recognised all over Nigeria as being at the forefront of leveraging technology to facilitate access to justice for the Nigerian citizenry. As we all know, the reward for hard work is more work. This is why His Lordship continues to get more responsibility in this regard including as the Chairman, Judiciary Information Technology Committee of the National Judicial Council (NJC).

Once again I commend the Executive Committee of the Maiduguri and Biu Branches of the NBA as well as the Law Week Planning Committee for putting together this Law Week event. I also salute the members of the two Branches for participating in the Law Week activities. Your participation contributes to the fulfilment of the mandatory professional development requirement of the NBA Constitution but more importantly, there is indeed a lot to be gained from actively participating in the activities. Once again I welcome you all to the 2022 Law Week and I thank you for being a fantastic audience.

OLUMIDE AKPATA
President, Nigerian Bar Association
22nd March 2022