By Bayo Akinlade Esq

I always wonder if we will ever get out of the circle of failure in this profession.
I mean, we have all our regional groupings telling us to endorse those within our regions yet a Yoruba lawyer will go to the East to say they should vote for him or her and vice versa and not be sentimental about it….. I am like isn’t this a comedic irony? I mean … It doesn’t even make sense!.

Our past leaders set up this system of rotation to satisfy the ambitions of some of our members back then… NBA went into coma because of this issue and the only way they thought to solve the problem was to share NBA positions amongst regions on a rotational basis…..this ended up giving us a political NBA where it’s no longer about the most experienced or committed but which region you come from.

The sad thing here is that NBA will never ever get its best hands to manage it and until we are bold enough to look beyond our own self ambitions, I am afraid we; as an association, will continue to wallow in the dark pit of professional incompetence.

What should our regions be used for? Well for one, with the growth of the numbers of lawyers and the diversity of the legal space, the regions are effective in building capacity, implementing CLE requirements, strengthening the sections, enforcing discipline and even reducing the cost of conferences etc.

We are soon closing down campaigns for the 2024 leadership circle but guess what…. Because of this regional thing, we already have NBA tacticians (not politicians) lined up for 2026 and 2028 elections…. It’s just a matter of wait until it’s your turn!

I am sure we can do better or can’t we?

One last thing…let us stop congratulating our colleagues who win elections within NBA..let them serve first and let’s see what they achieve before we give them a pat on the back.

Note:

My comments are general and not specific to any NBA leader nor candidate past or present.
These thoughts set down above are mine and my personal opinion!